Slashdot Mirror
Replacing New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain
Holdstrong writes "New Hampshire's iconic natural rock formation, the Old Man of the Mountain, fell from its mountain-side perch back in 2003. Award-winning architect Francis D. Treves is proposing a monument to replace it. His idea would feature a replica of the Old Man made out of 250 suspended glass panels and would allow visitors to enter the structure in order to gain views of the valley below. The design has received harsh criticism from the public, in part, Mr. Treves believes, due to the fact that quality images and accurate information about his design have been hard to come by. Replacing a beloved natural monument with a man-made one is sure to bring out emotions. Will a clearer understanding of the design help sway public opinion?"
You know, I was trying to come up with something about which I could be completely ambivalent and not care about one way or the other in the slightest.
Then I found this on slashdot.
Slashdot: News for New Hampshire. Stuff that doesn't matter at all.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Humans have an uncanny knack for finding faces in randomness. It's been said that this is an evolutionary feature. This explains why we sometimes think we see ghosts or Virgin Maries or even Jesus on the asses of dogs. But in reality, it's nothing more than our brain cleverly interpreting the random patterns into something we can easily comprehend.
So when the Old Man of the Mountain crumbled, we didn't just lose a pile of rocks. We lost one of our conceptual markers. Like the mountain in South Dakota that bears an uncanny resemblance to former presidents, this natural monument symbolizes a very dear slice of our history. To have lost it to nature is a blow to not only New Hampshire but our own national pride as Americans.
However simply replacing it with a glass structure is not necessarily the right thing to do. One key aspect of the monument was its permanence and impenetratibility. By replicating the shape in glass, the monument loses both aspects. It would be, in other words, better to have simply left the rubble alone.
I would encourage you to write your congressmen and representatives to stop this wrong-headed "artistic" solution. In Afghanistan, where the Taliban destroyed centuries-old statues, they are rebuilding them in stone. So too should the majesty of the stone face be returned in stone form.
"Replacing a beloved natural monument with a man-made one is sure to bring out emotions. Will a clearer understanding of the design help sway public opinion?"
Definitely. They will be more accurate with their condemnations.
I was in New Hampshire as a tourist from England with a friend from San Diego. She knew NH had this Old Man rock formation thing, and so we went to see it. We parked the car, and wandered along the track towards the lake, eyes up on the skyline waiting for this rock formation to appear round the corner from the hillside. But it didn't. It was September 2007. We'd got all the way to the viewpoint before we saw any mention of the fact it had fallen off four years earlier.
There were quite a few visitors there pointing at the empty space where the Old Man used to be.
Sorry for calling it "rubble", but it is. Before you get that wrong, that was exactly what made it special. It was a natural formation that had a remarkable, curious structure. You cannot "remake" that. Should Old Faithful stop spewing, are you going to replace it with a pumping structure? In what way is that special? I could dig a hole right here and install a water pump.
What made this monument a monument was that it was a natural curiosity. Remaking it cheapens it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Franconia Notch has been my favorite hiking spot for years. From climbing up to Lonesome Lake to walking down the Flume, I think it is the one place in all of New Hampshire to stand up to the grandeur of places such as Yosemite. Climbing up along the ridge on top of Mount Lafayette is an amazing experience. One of the trails winds up along thirty foot waterfalls. At the top and on clear days, you can see the small black plume of smoke from a railroad car making its way up Mount Washington. The cliffs on Canon Mountain are just breathtaking as you drive by and look up at them.
The old man was just one natural attraction in a place full of them. The big problem with replacing it is that it would be like spray painting over a Da Vinci. Glass or otherwise. The old man was an amazing natural formation, but it is gone. I hope that they don't a dump over a truly beautiful place just so people can relive the past. I thought that was what pictures were for.