[Sounds of nature] [Music Playing] Ancient Monadnock!

Silent pine-girt hill, Whose majesty could move a whittier's quill; Whose distant brow the humbler pen excites; Whose purpled slope the raptur'd gaze invites; Stand thou!

Great Sentinel, though nations fall ln thee New-England... triumphs over all!

H. P. Lovecraft.

[Music Playing] In Southwest New Hampshire stands a mountain that reaches 3165 feet above sea level.

On the busiest days of the year, up to 5000 people hike the 38 trails, making it the most climbed mountain in North America, and the second most climbed in the world.

Named by the original inhabitants of the area, the Abenaki (Eb-benekey), often called the Abenaki (Ah-ben-AW-ki).

Mount Monadnock is more than a mountain-it is a sacred place, an artistic inspiration, and a landscape loved for centuries by locals and tourists alike.

I think a lot of people see it for its history, for its connections with Thoreau and with Emerson and with Abbot Thayer and famous painters.

People travel a long way to come here, to hike a mountain that's really become famous not because it's a mountain but because it is a literary icon.

But it's more than just a hike and it's more than just the vistas.

There is a sense of connection with generations of people, of artists, of folks who have um felt the same way about the mountain.

There are plenty of places in New Hampshire, where you can hike and enjoy solitude in a deep wilderness experience.

If that's what you seek, you probably won't go back to Monadnock, that's not what Monadnock is about, it is a people's mountain.

It is a place of interaction, certainly with your family, with your friends socially along the trail.

Rising alone above the region, Monadnock's rocky mountain top boasts a 360 degree view.

The only place where you can see parts of all six New England states.

Famous for its accessibility, Monadnock draws visitors of all skill levels from around the world, though it is not an easy climb, the four-hour round trip to the summit does not require ropes or special climbing gear.

The first time I went up Monadnock, I was surprised at the effort required to get there.

In fact, I'm always surprised by the effort required to get there.

It always seems a little bit harder than I remembered it.

But I also always know that, yes, I'm going to make it.

And if this is the second most climbed mountain in the world, then by God, I'm not going to be the one to stop half-way up.

My relationship with the mountain is kind of like having a friend that'll never go away or will never do you any wrong.

It's the consistency of having something there that's always going to be there.

This is just happens to be my time to go out and play on the mountain.

The calendar says I'm getting old, but I don't feel like I am.

And the mountain is ageless.

Unlike in the western United States, where large tracts of public land were preserved as national parks before they could be developed, Mount Monadnock had to be preserved acre by acre from private property and eventually was designated a New Hampshire State Park.

The mountain was saved by the grassroots efforts of preservationists over two centuries.

Painters, lawyers, foresters and local politicians alike were all inspired to protect this unique New England landmark from development.

And when we talk about who saved Mount Monadnock, it's easy to argue where the lion's share of the credit should go, and often it's to an individual or an entity or an organization when the reality is the mountain itself engendered such a feeling among the people of the region.

Well, it's a whole series of accidents.

The most unlikely people came forward.

People who were busy doing other things came forward often at the last minute.

Whenever Mount Monadnock is endangered by someone who either wants to cut down the trees or build a housing development, there's always this person, this Monadnock angel who shows up and starts an organization, a grassroots organization to raise the money to protect it.

The story of Monadnock is as much about the people who loved it as it is about the mountain itself.

Mount Monadnock is named for the way it appears.

The mountain that stands apart from all others.

It's visible from more directions than any other mountain in the New England area.

And as a result was a place that had meaning in terms of both finding where you are and recognizing your place on earth.

Mon-Ad-Nock.

Mon is separated, apart from other things.

A mountain, Ahden , that is Mon , means a mountain that's on its own, or separate.

Ah on the end is probably Monadanah , means like, one who is.

And the, the, last K on the end would be a locative location, making it an actual place name.

So, it's like saying at the mountain which stands alone.

You would never speak of a mountain as it, you wouldn't say, What is that mountain?

You'd say, Who is that mountain?

[Abenaki language] Who is that mountain .

Within our language, a mountain is alive.

It's a common understanding built within the language itself.

[Abenaki language] The Abenaki people inhabited much of what is now northern New England.

Often moving in separate groups with the changing seasons: Hunting wild game in the forests and catching salmon at the falls of rivers; Planting corn, beans and squash on fertile soil near lakes; Harvesting wild berries on mountainsides and hilltops.

The European settlers have been here only for about 300 years, but the Native Americans have been in the region for 12 and a half thousand years.

We understand that they look to the mountain and named the mountain as they did many things in the area, but they have been here for so much longer than the European settlers and have had an impact, although they weren't always recognized by the European settlers, the white historians who wrote the town histories often said there were no Indians here when the settlers arrived, or they don't even mention.

Native Americans despite that 12 and a half thousand year history.

The native presence is continuous.

We have not vanished.

We are still here.

You get this picture that the Indians are the past, that we are the vanishing people.

What was it like when there were Indians?

I've been asked that question.

The past is always present.

We're in the middle of the past, but we're not locked in stasis, never changing, never growing.

I'm wearing European clothing.

I have ancestry, which is European as well as native, but my heart still has red blood in it.

And my mind still has a memory and a connection to the past, the present, and that future, which is always coming or always moving and we're always going to be here.

The Monadnock region and the mountain has always brought up feelings, in, at least in me and I think my family of just it's just its presence.

It's just beautiful.

My native family, while they never told stories about Mt.

Monadnock, they always had a picture hanging in their living room of Mt.

Monadnock.

It was there from when I was a child and it was there when they closed out the house.

And my grandfather, this is from the white side, their farm looked out and there's Mt.

Monadnock just, just there, beautiful, gorgeous.

I think perhaps people don't realize today how Monadnock was viewed when the first settlers arrived here.

They considered it a wasteland because they were farmers and they couldn't pasture their cattle or grow crops high up on the rocky slopes of Mount.

Monadnock.

They had no use for the mountain.

At the time, in the 1700s, the mountain was forested all the way to the summit, just as it had been for hundreds of generations.

As they cleared the land at its base, the early settlers used fires to make the stumps easier to remove, and sometimes the blazes reached up the mountain side, which resulted in a tangle of brush and small trees sprouting up.

There were fires.

I don't know if it was necessarily set to drive out the wolves.

That makes a good story.

I, I am sure fires were set because, uh, back in the 1800's, a lot of people burned areas to open up for pasture and for land.

It was denuded, heavy rains, erosion, and everything else has happened, uh, wind on the mountain and just worn it right down to the mica schist that sits there today.

The tangle of brush and trees sprouting up became a haven for wolves.

There were wolves in this area at that time and it was easy for them to hide in that underbrush on the mountain and they began to attack local sheep herds.

So, the shepherds, the farmers became very upset with that and they decided at one point to go hunting those wolves on the mountain and around the mountain.

A group of those farmers got together at the farm of one man in Fitzwilliam planning to go out the next day and hunt wolves and during the night, while they were sleeping, wolves came down from the mountain and attacked his sheep.

They went out on to the mountain the next day and to try to drive the wolves out into the open, they started all that under brush on fire.

That was 1819 and it burned over the surface of the mountain once again, but this time it really destroyed all the undergrowth, the trees, the brush, and the soil that was there simply washed away in the rain and the mountain has been bare rock at the summit since that time.

In 1781, just 5 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, a man named Amos Fortune moved with his wife Violet to Jaffrey, New Hampshire in the shadow of Monadnock.

This man, though 71 years old, was starting a new life.

Up until a decade earlier, Fortune had lived as a slave.

He was actually 15 when he was brought through slavery.

And it had to have been just a living hell as it was for all slaves.

Being on a slave ship, how they were crammed in not knowing where they were going, not knowing what was happening to them, being torn from your family.

It's it's unbelievable.

Amos Fortune's horrific cross-Atlantic voyage brought him to New England.

There was slavery in New Hampshire in the late 1700s after the first settlers arrived here and into the early 1800s in this area.

In New Hampshire, slaves were chiefly for work in the home, or they would learn the trade of their master.

So, the population of slaves in New Hampshire was always small compared to anything that was occurring in the southern states.

In Cheshire county in 1790, there were about thirty slaves.

A tanner in Woburn, Massachusetts, purchased the young man in 1752, but in November of 1770, Amos Fortune was able to buy his freedom.

Nine years later, he paid for the freedom of Violet Baldwin, and they married and moved to Jaffrey.

In 1789, the Fortunes bought 25 acres of land to make their home.

Amos's tanning business making saddles, harnesses and other leather goods was successful, attracting clients from all over New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

In addition to running his thriving business, Fortune busied himself with community engagement, helping found Jaffrey's first library, and being an active member of the church, where he befriended the Reverend Laban Ainsworth.

There were other, several other black families that followed him to the Jaffrey area.

They came up from Massachusetts after he did and settled in and apparently were influenced by him and were friends of his.

There's very little known about Amos Fortune.

He's one of the local Black folks that we know the most about, even though it is very little.

And many of them, we don't know their names, we simply know that they're listed in the census.

Later, books would be written about Amos Fortune, including one in which he climbs Mount Monadnock and waits at sunset for the word of God.

But on November 17th, 1801 Amos Fortune died at the age of 91, having lived 31 years as a free man.

He was buried in the cemetery behind the Jaffrey meeting house.

It's an old cemetery, and that speaks a lot but to see an African that's buried there from the 1800s and his wife.

That was one of the things that he left in his will, was, to have a handsome headstone for him and his wife.

Seeing that headstone, that he got what he wanted.

He started out in Africa, he ends up in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, of all places in the world, and there he is.

And he died with dignity, and I think for me, that's probably really, really special.

The inscriptions on the headstones of Amos and Violet, who died a year later, are said to be written by their friend, Reverend Ainsworth.

Sacred to the memory of Amos Fortune who was born free in Africa, a Slave in America, he purchased liberty, professed Christianity, lived reputably, and died hopefully.

Monadnock, a soaring double hump, rises into the sky at the left elbow that is to say, it is close at hand.

From the base of the long slant of the mountain, the valley spreads away to the circling frame of hills, and beyond the frame the billowy sweep of remote great ranges rise to view and flow, fold upon fold, wave upon wave, soft and blue and unworldly, to the horizon fifty miles away.

In these October days.

Monadnock and the valley and its framing hills make an inspiring picture to look at, for they are sumptuously splashed and mottled and betorched from sky line to sky line with the richest dyes the autumn can furnish; And when they lie flaming in the full drench of the mid-afternoon sun, the sight affects the spectator physically, it stirs his blood like military music.

Mark Twain.

When the railroad arrived in this region in 1847 and 1848, it meant that people could get here easily.

They could climb off the train and quickly get to the mountain and this was perfect timing because artists were beginning to paint the mountain at that time and authors were writing about it.

So, people were beginning to learn about Mount Monadnock and what it was and what it had to offer to the public.

So, coming together the authors, the artists, and the train helped to bring many, many more thousands of people to the region easily to climb on Monadnock and to enjoy nature here, away from the city.

The mountain has inspired writers and poets throughout the ages, as varied and popular as Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau, Willa Cather, H.P.

Lovecraft, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote one of the most famous poems about the mountain.

That poem goes on for five or six pages and talks about Monadnock in all its glory and sometimes as it was there, it's the actual voice of the Mountain speaking through Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And it was a poem that every school child knew a hundred years ago, it was a poem a lot of people memorized.

Thoreau visited Monadnock first in 1844, when he embarked on a bee line walk from Concord, Massachusetts, with a wooden staff in his hands and backpack full of books.

I took a ramble over the summit at midnight by moonlight.

I remember the groaning of the wind on the rocks, and that you seemed much nearer to the moon than on the plains.

The light is then in harmony with the scenery.

Of what use the sunlight on the mountain-summits?

From the cliffs you looked off into vast depths of illuminated air.

Henry David Thoreau I do love the journals that Thoreau wrote, when he was up on the mountain for about a week we should print that in a small backpack version just hand it up on top of the mountain 'cause he, he captures so much about the mountain.

I mean, I've been up that mountain, I don't know how many times, none of us have seen as much as Thoreau did.

And he describes the people up there.

He describes the farmers and the mechanics crowding up there during the day.

He says, They're shouting and hallooing to each new crowd that issues from below.

He gets the natural history of it, he gets the sense of how the day ends and you're looking off the mountain and you can hear the different sounds from the farms and dogs barking.

Almost without interruption we had the mountain in sight before us... its sublime gray mass that antique, brownish gray, Ararat color.

Probably these crests of the earth are for the most part of one color in all lands, that gray color of antiquity, which nature loves; Color of unpainted wood, weather-stain, time-stain; Not glaring, not gaudy; The color of all roofs, the color of things that endure, and the color that wears well.

- Henry David Thoreau.

He says, Those who come to look at the peak have but seen little of the mountain.

So this is a Thoreauvian inversion, and he says, Don't look off the mountain, look at the mountain.

So, Thoreau, I think, really does the best job at describing the mountain.

He really captures it.

Thoreau's last trip to the mountain was with his friend, Ellery Channing, an experienced hiker who had never camped before.

Thoreau decided to write a book about Monadnock and planned to stay for a week and collect extensive notes.

On the train ride back to Concord, Thoreau filled a dozen pages of his journal with descriptions of the plants, animals, and insects he had observed on Monadnock.

The final two pages in his journal from the Monadnock trip are notes for the next time, when he planned to bring a small bag to stuff with moss to form a pillow.

But there was no next time Thoreau died of tuberculosis on May 6, 1862 at age 44.

The 19th century unleashed a wave of tourism in America.

Monadnock's proximity to Boston, Providence, and New York made it an obvious attraction for tourists traveling by train.

Mount Monadnock in the 19th Century undergoes this transformation.

What happens as the century goes on, is that the mountain becomes venerated.

The countryside gets settled.

It becomes a place wild enough, It becomes a place for picnics, it becomes a place for excursion.

And it's part of this whole discovery of America in that era where the Hudson River painters in the Hudson River and then up in the White Mountains.

Everybody is going out to see Niagara.

America's seen as, you know, nature's nation.

Europe has cathedrals, Europe has history, but we have these natural wonders.

Visitors to Mount Monadnock had their choice of local hotels, but the most popular was on the mountain, about a mile below the summit-the Halfway House, built by George and Abbie Rice in the 1860s.

During the Victorian Era, visitors took the train to Troy and later to Jaffrey or Fitzwilliam and were driven by carriage to the gate at the beginning of the steep toll road that led up to the hotel.

So, people were coming out from the cities and larger towns of Massachusetts and New Hampshire to escape the heat, the noise, and the unhealthy atmosphere in the cities at that time and they would come to the wilds of southwest New Hampshire.

However, when they got here, they also wanted some amenities and some things that they were familiar with back home.

By the turn of the century, there was an entire complex of buildings at the site, including 30 rooms within the main building, and cottages built on the bluff overlooking the hotel.

The dining room served gourmet meals prepared from food grown in the hotel gardens and orchards; And the library was well-stocked with autographed books from many of the famous authors who had stayed there over the years.

There was room for as many as 100 guests.

Visitors woke up to a hearty breakfast and were supplied with a box lunch they could take with them on their daily hikes.

They camped on the mountain and they didn't have hiking shoes or anything.

If you look at all those pictures, they're wearing very slick, city kind of shoes.

And I think, in a sense, in the 19th Century, it was a bigger mountain.

It, played a bigger role in the national consciousness just as New England did.

As tourism on the mountain continued to thrive, the Rices came to realize that if they owned the summit they could charge an admission fee to hikers.

There was an even greater profit to be gained if they could also charge a toll for using the White Arrow Trail to the summit.

They filed a quick claim deed which meant that in twenty years, if no one else interfered, they would have owned it.

They would have had the ownership of the mountain, and until then, nobody had actually claimed to own it.

The whole top of Monadnock was not owned by anybody because nobody ever wanted it.

It was just rocks and things.

You couldn't grow anything on it, you couldn't even graze sheep on it.

It was all set to become final, the selectmen in Jaffrey found out about it.

They went back in the town records and found there was this transfer to the Rev.

Laban Ainsworth, who was the only person who really cared at that time about Mount Monadnock and had climbed up to the top and expressed some interest so in appreciation a sort of a, a token gift, they gave it to Rev.

Laban Ainsworth, the summit of Monadnock.

They figured if he owned it what they needed to do was find the descendants of Ainsworth.

They were scattered all over the country and they, wrote letter to them that went something like You may not know it, but you own the top of Mount Monadnock.

How would you like to give it to the town of Jaffrey?

and managed to get enough of those people to sign it over that they then went to the judge and said.

The town of Jaffrey, does own the top of Mount Monadnock.

And that was enough to convince the judge.

It was real unusual at that time, which was 1880's, for a town to purchase a piece of land, to actually set it up as a preserve to protect it.

The turn of the 20th Century brought about big changes not only for the nation, but for Mount Monadnock as well.

It was 1903.

Theodore Roosevelt was president, the Wright Brothers took their first flight at Kitty Hawk, and in New Hampshire, one of the most iconic trails on Mount Monadnock, the White Dot Trail, blazed only three years earlier, was already being threatened by deforestation.

The land around the trail had been owned by two families who decided to sell the stumpage rights.

In response to the threat, the very first group created to preserve Mount Monadnock was formed-the.

Monadnock Forestry Association, founded by 81 year old philanthropist Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a close friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

But by the time the association was formed, a sawmill had already been built and trees on the trail were being cut down.

The association sought to purchase the property but the land owners were reluctant to sell.

The association was forced to find an alternative approach.

They discovered a law that allowed the State Forestry.

Commission to purchase forests through eminent domain whenever it was considered in the public interest and convinced the state that saving 500 acres on Mount.

Monadnock would indeed be in the public interest.

But the actual purchase could not be made with state money, so the association began to fundraise for the assessed value of $8,000, a very large sum of money at a time when the average factory worker was paid $5 a week.

A well-publicized appeal for support began.

Contributions soon flowed in from all over the country.

With that money, the Forestry Association first bought the stumpage rights from the lumber company to halt the immediate threat of logging while it raised the remainder of the purchase price.

Eventually, the land was condemned by the state and the property owners were reimbursed by the Monadnock Forestry Association, which immediately donated the 500 acres to the state for permanent preservation as a forest preserve.

In its final report, the Monadnock.

Forestry Association noted that, for the first time, hikers could climb the mountain entirely on public land without having to trespass on the private property that had ringed the mountain on all sides.

The timescale that the mountain operates on is so much longer than the span of one human lifetime.

One common theme that the heroes of Monadnock have is that they saw their opportunity, their generation's opportunity to protect this place for all time.

I enjoy painting the mountain.

You can see it from so many different vantage points that you don't ever have to paint the same painting twice because there are so many places where it just pops out.

I'm not sure I know how to describe it but there is, there's almost an aura about the mountain, um, that it, it just keeps drawing people here.

Monadnock is famous.

The paintings are in museums all over the country.

If you go into the Los Angeles Museum, there's Mount Monadnock.

Abbott Thayer was an artist who grew up in Dublin.

He really began some of the artistic history that Mount Monadnock has.

His personality drew other greats, now, literary artist, painters, and all kinds of folks to the mountain.

Thayer kept the line of sight from his compound up toward the summit clear of trees so the mountain would remain free from obstructions.

His daily routine was to work on a painting in his studio for three or four hours and then take a break to hike up Monadnock.

He took in art students from around the country who hiked with him and learned from him how to love as well as paint the mountain.

He painted the same view of Monadnock over and over.

Thayer explained to his students that he never tired of painting his backyard mountain for the same reason that he never tired of painting his children.

He had a house built for him on the lower slopes of the mountain.

It was supposed to be a summer place but he loved it so much that he took his family there.

They didn't have heat, they didn't have lighting and they didn't have running water.

And he also felt that the fresh air was extremely healthful.

So, he and his family slept outside in lean-tos year round to get that fresh, cool air.

The outline of this mountain is as sharp as steel.

Many painters soften such outlines for the sake of 'atmosphere' but I can't make this one sharp enough.

And those little distant spruces on the skyline it's incredible how small they are and yet their exact smallness is one of the very things that give scale to the mountain.

-Abbott Thayer.

Thayer was very concerned about conservation of that land that he loved.

His artwork really was extremely spiritual and important to him in that way and the mountain became that way to him.

He learned that there were some people attempting to acquire land on the mountain and one day, he was climbing the mountain and he came upon a fence posts that said, Please don't pass through.

and he became very upset by this.

So, he went to work to try to see who really owned that land to have it preserved for future use.

He was able through his research to determine previous owners, the holders of deeds of many pieces of property on the mountain and was able to get quick claims or to acquire those for for the towns so that they would be preserved.

By 1916, 775 acres on the Dublin side of the summit, was protected by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

He was, first of all, well-known as an artist, but he should be almost as well-known as a conservationist for the work that he did to save Mount Monadnock.

Thayer died on May 29, 1921, his son Gerald, walking barefoot and alone on a cloudless day with a stiff wind out of the northwest, carried the urn containing his father's ashes up the Pumpelly Trail.

Through the hard work and dedication of many generations, Mount Monadnock had been protected through a patchwork of ownership by three stewards: The state, the forest society and the Town of Jaffrey.

But in 1944 voters of the Town of Jaffrey approved a plan to build an FM radio tower on the summit.

The antenna would stick above the peak, and be visible on from all sides, and it would broadcast to customers within a 100-mile radius.

A three-quarter mile tramway from the Halfway House to the top of the mountain was also required to transport people and equipment, and the owner would be paid an annual fee for the use of their land.

The town of Jaffrey would be paid rent of up to $5,000 a year as part of the lease, and 4% of the receipts from the station.

In January of 1945, The Association to Protect Mount.

Monadnock was formed, and once again the cry went out for donations of money and support to save the mountain from developers.

Dublin resident Grenville Clark, an important advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, was a strong opponent to the antenna project.

He wrote hundreds of letters to people all over the country seeking their support, and sent letters to the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, urging them to deny the license for the new station.

The receipt book of the association records over 500 donations, including money from children's piggy banks and the profits from a bake sale conducted by the Monadnock.

Garden Club.

After receiving a flood of letters opposing the project, the FCC voted unanimously to deny a permit for an FM station on top of Mount Monadnock and without a license the entire project quickly folded.

Grenville Clark, now he was somebody who was incredibly busy in 1945.

He was involved in the government and he was involved in forming the United Nations so he had all these projects but he lived in Dublin and he didn't want that radio antenna up there.

Every time the mountain needed somebody there was somebody like Grenville Clark.

While the immediate threat was ended, the association remained concerned that some other group might want to commercialize the mountain through the privately-held Halfway House and Jaffrey link to the summit.

The association used the nearly $25,000 in donations to purchase the Halfway House and its land in October of 1947.

On April 14th, 1954, the Halfway House, once host to the likes of Emerson, burned to the ground, ending an era of a once grand hotel on the mountain.

The Halfway House land was donated to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

During the second half of the 20th century, as the number of hikers reached record levels, the mountain's remarkable popularity began to have a noticeable, negative impact.

There were simply too many hikers for the trails to accommodate, and the Monadnock experience was being degraded.

Monadnock is beginning to resemble Coney Island, .

Park Manager, Charlie Royce said.

Attracting up to 4,500 visitors during Columbus Day weekend meant there were as many as 600 people on the summit at one time.

And they were leaving behind piles of trash.

Monadnock, Royce said, will soon be known as the largest trash pile within 100 miles of Boston.

Will LaPage, a Monadnophile who headed up the state parks at the time, thought the best solution was to educate hikers about the delicate ecology of the mountain and the impact that trash had on it.

He is credited with coming up with the Carry in Carry out idea that has since been adopted by parks across the nation.

Even the trash cans that had been placed at the trail heads and picnic areas were removed.

There are certain things that you don't do in sacred places, LaPage said.

First of all, you don't leave your trash there.

But by 1975 the estimated number of hikers reached a record 125,000.

The state legislature understood that the overuse of the park had become a crisis.

It could no longer be considered a local problem.

State Senator.

C. Robertson Trowbridge of Dublin suggested the establishment of a Monadnock Advisory.

Commission with representatives from Dublin, Jaffrey, and Troy to plan for the future of the mountain, the first time the mountain would be considered as a single entity and not just part of the towns in which it was located.

The commission suggested the creation of a Mountain Zone that would prevent any construction above the 1,700 foot mark without permission of the advisory commission and the.

State Department of Resources and Economic Development.

Strip development at the mountain's base would also be prohibited, to protect the view from the summit.

One by one the towns approved the plan and added it to their zoning rules.

We worked very hard in the 1980s, late 80s to get through mountain zones in Dublin, Jaffrey, Marlborough, and Troy and this was the first time it had ever been done in the State of New Hampshire that we had, I guess you would call it, zoning or a land use plan that involved more than one town.

You could still build a home in them, you can do farming, and forestry but no commercialism.

In 1987, Monadnock became an official Federal National Natural Landmark, joining the ranks of Franconia Notch in New Hampshire, Mount Katahdin in Maine, DiamondHead in Hawaii, and ShipRock in New Mexico.

I could stand alone at the base of the White Dot Trail by my favorite plaque, and it says May it remain always as it is today, free, wild, and beautiful, the unspoiled heritage of the past, a place of refuge for those who seek its peace in years to come.

The lesson of the plaque and the lesson of that hopeful prophecy is, we today, enjoy the benefits of the work that was done by our predecessors.

That spectacular natural heritage is a gift to us from the hard work of countless individuals and organizations over a century and a half.

And I would ask people when they climb the mountain to think about what our generation's time means, what is our responsibility to the mountain.

There's a power there.

An interesting thing about trails in North America and in the Monadnock area in particular, almost always they follow the path that a game animal followed and that someone followed that game animal.

And over the decades, the years, the centuries, it became a regular route to go.

Throughout Monadnock, the trails that we follow are trails that were followed for thousands of years.

In a way that worked within the landscape so we could pass as a fish does through the water, leaving no trace behind.

Monadnock is a multifaceted gem that has something for everybody.

People that want to exercise: Monadnock.

The families are looking for a place to bond: Monadnock.

People who need some healing: Monadnock.

She has something to offer everybody.

More than a century ago, the owners of the Halfway House hotel on the Southwest corner of Mount Monadnock began keeping track of hikers who could race to the summit and return in the shortest amount of time.

Ever since then, power hikers have challenged each other to be the fastest or the longest lasting.

Larry Davis, who lives in the mountain's shadow, holds the record for climbing the mountain on consecutive days: 2,850 days, nearly eight years without missing a single day.

I was happy when I hit my first calendar year and the, um, a lot of people thought that I reached my goal of hiking every day for one year so the next day, I'll take the day off and that didn't happen because if you see what goes on up there in the course of a year, it'ill grow on ya to the point where it's, it's like a daily tradition, a routine, and it just built upon me enough to where I wasn't just gonna just take a day off for no good reason.

It's never been a place where you go and have a boring day.

I mean, sometimes I see absolutely no one.

When I experience that, it gives me my thinking time and quiet time and I get to see things that nobody else can see.

The experiences of being out there alone, it's a novelty considering how busy the mountain is all summer so I get to look forward to the changes in the season and I look forward to all of 'em.

I meet people from all over the world and I don't even have to leave town.

I figured out that 25% of my life was spent on the mountain.

So how many days would I have to do to make it half?

I'd say 95% of the people that hiked the mountain are interested in the mountain.

Some do it for exercise; Some do it to be in a quiet place.

I recall a gentleman that used to come into the park on Sundays with his book and he'd hike up and find a spot all by himself and read most of the day.

The people that enjoy coming to Monadnock are good people and actually it's traditional with a lot of families, they come back every year at a certain time.

A lot of people are not prepared for it.

They think that because so many people do it that it's easy.

They come in August with no water.

They come in October, um, in sweatshirts when it's freezing at the top and I tell them, it's 25 degrees on the top, bring a jacket, oh we'll be fine and they'll come down, oh it's cold up there.

When I've gone up the mountain with the freshman students, I guess the common theme when they get to the top is one of relief.

It's, it, it's a good workout getting to the top of Monadnock and most of them didn't know they were in for something that intensive.

But when you go up with you know three hundred people, there is a great sense of camaraderie and achievement and there's a lot of laughter.

It's a great experience.

The first time I climbed.

Mount Monadnock, I was very young, and it was a day trip, a family trip.

I just remember that image of being at that top of the mountain and it obviously did something to me, you know, because I still feel it.

I can still see that, that and I can, and I'm still that little girl at the top of the mountain, looking down and I see the bodies of water and the roads and the little, tiny buildings.

It just was awe inspiring.

I never forget it.

Stays with me.

We all go through hard times in life.

It really helps to have a place to go like, like Monadnock to go clear your mind of all the clutters of the world.

And you don't have to go to the top, sometimes it's too busy for a bit of sanctuary, but there's always places out there where you can just go and see that this is the way the world is really working.

And it has nothing to do with politics, or dollars and cents, or the stress of your job.

Leave that somewhere else and, and find your peace of mind out on the mountainside.

Anybody that needs it, there's a place for you there.

I would hope that people would take from this a holistic understanding of the region.

Not just one piece of it.

Not just the European history.

Not just the modern culture.

Not just the natives but the environment as well and how all of these things tie together and to create out of that a, a common sense of what it means to live in this region.

Something that transcends all the different ethnic groups that have come here, something that transcends time, something that people in a modern, suburban community share with native people who were here ten thousand years ago in creating that sense of common identity built around, appreciating and loving the place that you live in.

And say beyond wood, water, wildlife, and recreation.

There are spiritual values, there are emotional attachments that we make with the places that we come to love.

And when I return to Monadnock, I encounter my earlier self.

I think that's why people chiseled their names in the summit.

They come back, they tell their grandkids about a time when they were young and they climbed the mountain.

And each time we go back, the mountain has a new lesson for us if we care to listen.

And to care for a place like that, how could you not care for a place that makes us feel that way.

I can say with absolute certainty that I have never left.

Mount Monadnock in a worse mood than I arrived.

I will go there sometime with a head full of snakes, and spend time on the mountain, and driving home, I find myself.

My mood is buoyed.

People have used it for generations, many, many generations and it should be there for future generations the way it is now, because I feel a hundred years from now or even fifty years from now, this mountain will be a sanctuary in the middle of a megalopolis.

Being preserved and protected the way it is, I hope people 50 or 100 years from now will see it and enjoy it the way I have and I know a lot of other people have.

The more time you spend with someone or something, the more you come to love it.

It's something different all, all the time um new sites, new sounds, something, something new to learn about.

Just like learning about a person.

Monadnock is not an inanimate thing to me.

She is living, breathing thing.

She is not just a place.

When something gives you joy, you love it, right?

Mount Monadnock has entered the twenty-first century.

Its summit free of roadways, buildings, tramways and radio towers.

Without the help of a vast army of Monadnock protectors, who spent thousands of hours, over a century and a quarter, fighting off developers with legal savvy and donated funds, visitors would see a much different mountain today.

In every case, over a 120-year history, it was the preservers who persevered.

These places are a critical safety net.

We don't have to save a place, we have to save ourselves.

Why should Monadnock be protected?

I think its name alone indicates why.

It stands alone, it is a place that is very special and has become very special for generations of European Americans as well as those of us who are indigenous.

I believe that in wilderness is the preservation of the world as Thoreau put it, but it's not really wilderness, it's not really wild.

It is part of our human landscape that we recognize and honor by not interrupting the natural flow.

The idea of wilderness without people actually is a fallacy in North America because we live within the wilderness as part of it, and protecting a place such as Monadnock is protecting a part of ourselves.

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