On Mount Kearsarge – Now It’s Our Turn
There’s just something flat wrong with the kind of familiarity that makes one fail to see the extraordinary everyday beauty surrounding us.
When I travel to Boston, I notice the unfamiliar. For me, a “country mouse,” that tends to be architecture – elegant facades of brick, granite, marble and glass or an exotic cityscape of buildings, street trees and neighborhood parks. South of an imaginary line, I’m the stranger in a strange land.
Returning back “up nawth” into interior New Hampshire, I crest a rise on I-93 north of the Hooksett Tolls and just south of Concord to see the familiar profile of Kearsarge on the horizon. When I see that distant, flat-topped mesa, I relax knowing I’ll be home soon.
I live very nearly in the shadow of Kearsarge, the mountain Poet Laureate, Donald Hall affectionately calls “Blue.” Where we live defines us. It takes decades, but in time, we become the people of our place.
Our local business directory contains dozens of “Kearsarge” listings. Many a Friday night football game has left me hoarse from hollering the Kearsarge High School Cougars battle cry: “Here we go Keah’-sahge!” The name of “our” mountain has come to mean “home.”
Kearsarge itself remains impassive. It’s vast and heavily forested. Hiking trails lead to its summit from two State Parks: Rollins State Park in Warner and Winslow State Park in Wilmot. Along with the nearly 4000-acre Kearsarge State Forest, NH Fish and Game Kearsarge Wildlife Management Area and private conservation easements, more than 7,000 acres of the peak are permanently protected.
From the granite summit, views stretch in all directions. Occasionally, I climb to gaze down at the villages and the lakes at its feet. I remember how it once felt to first climb the mountain thirty years ago. Visitors today likely regard the mountain that exact same way. The view really hasn’t changed much.
Kearsarge remains prominent even when glimpsed from afar. I’m surprised by unexpected slot views from back roads in Gilmanton and Weare. It’s distinctive and impressive profile dominates the skyline north of Mount Sunapee and southeast of Mount Cardigan. From that high and lonely stretch of I-89 descending from the “great divide” between the Connecticut and Merrimack River watersheds, Kearsarge is a gateway sentinel. Compared to Boston it must seem like wilderness. But locals take the mountain scenery for granted, barely noticing.
I once watched a full harvest moon rise over the mountain during peak foliage. I’ve seen Northern Lights leap and dance like pink and blue flames from behind the peak. In April, sunrise illuminates valleys shrouded in fog. In summer, I hear Fourth of July fireworks roll like thunder across the valley to echo off that mountain wall.
I call it “our” mountain, but it isn’t. It’s yours.
Each generation has an opportunity to contribute to a legacy of local land conservation. On Kearsarge, its our turn. Protection of the mountain began in 1918 when the Forest Society purchased the summit as a memorial to governor Frank West Rollins who served as the Forest Society’s first President.
The Forest Society is now working to purchase 1,025 acres on Black Mountain, a sinuous shoulder of Kearsarge. What we choose to protect today shapes the inheritance we leave to our successors. Black Mountain contains the Lincoln Trail, a segment of the Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge Greenway trail to Kearsarge as well as a local snowmobile corridor. The tract features managed forest, scenic waterfalls on Mountain Brook, extraordinary wildlife habitats and views that stretch from the Sunapee highlands to the Cardigan region. For details about the campaign to protect Black Mountain, visit forestsociety.org/blackmountain.
Some say: “you can’t eat scenery” and “sunsets don’t pay the taxes”… unless mountain scenery, abundant wildlife, clean water and deep forests create an enduring appeal which lures visitors and drives local business. The Kearsarge region is defined by its mountain; make it your mountain.
Naturalist Dave Anderson is Director of Education and Volunteer Services for The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. His column appears once a month in the New Hampshire Sunday News. E-mail him at danderson@forestsociety.org or through the Forest Society Web site: forestsociety.org.