Where the Mountain Stands Alone

by Mansfield, Howard

• ISBN13: 9781584655565
• ISBN10: 1584655569
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-08-31
• Publisher: Univ Pr of New England

Summary

In the language of the area's original inhabitants, Mount Monadnock, in the southwest corner of New Hampshire, is "the mountain that stands alone." This anthology, with its rich mix of original essays, historical texts, and excerpts from oral histories, celebrates the natural and human history of this region. Editor Howard Mansfield says that "the elusive feel of one place exists in that intersection of political and family history, landscape, destiny, expectations, weather and time." Featuring contributions from such writers as Sy Montgomery, Ernest Hebert, Janisse Ray, Tom Wessels, Richard Ober, Jim Collins, and Jane Brox, Where the Mountain Stands Alone ranges from the formation of the region's distinctive landscape to the lives and customs of its first inhabitants, from the industrialization of the antebellum period to the collapse of both farms and mills, from the region's influence on writers and artists to the rewilding and repopulating of the twentieth century. It is a selective but richly suggestive overview of centuries of human interaction with a particular landscape. "That New Hampshire bluff," as Henry David Thoreau said of Monadnock, "will longest haunt our dreams." The Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire, promotes the interdisciplinary study of place and of the connections between community and environment.

Author Biography

HOWARD MANSFIELD is author of The Bones of the Earth (2004), The Same Ax, Twice (UPNE, 2000), and In The Memory House (1993). He lives in Hancock, New Hampshire.

Table of Contents

Introduction : the American quest for placelessness	p. 1
Introduction	p. 9
Readings : Indians and wolves	p. 10
Sokoki homeland from Monadnock : K'namitobena Sokwaki	p. 15
Phineas Stevens at the threshold of the frontier	p. 28
11,000 years on the Ashuelot	p. 33
Borders and boundaries	p. 44
The disorderly origins of the granite state	p. 47
Journal : the lost child	p. 50
Introduction	p. 55
Report : the new road to Keene, 1839	p. 56
Report : Connecticut River Ferry, 1900	p. 61
Parables of place	p. 65
Journal : Thoreau on Monadnock, 1860	p. 73
Report : following Thoreau	p. 89
Recollections : Marlborough's granite quarry	p. 89
A mill girl's offering	p. 92
The family history of water	p. 102
"Plant your apples on the hills"	p. 113
Recollections : Marion Davis, Cattle Drover	p. 120
The grange votes down automobiles	p. 122
Introduction	p. 127
The last 113 people	p. 128
Letter : Stoddard reawakening, 1946	p. 136
Land of stone	p. 138
Blueberry planet	p. 152
The tragic life of William Preston Phelps	p. 160
The poor farm	p. 171
Recollections : the Green Army of Camp Annett	p. 178
Recollections : lost ski areas	p. 181
Readings : "what ails New England?"	p. 182
Introduction	p. 191
Readings : the folks of the Monadnock region want you for a neighbor!	p. 192
Abbott Thayer in the spell of Monadnock	p. 194
Letter : a Dublin summer	p. 205
Confessions of a part-time squire	p. 207
Report : how to build a house	p. 210
Far from Nebraska's prairies	p. 211
Grandfather's farm	p. 216
Back to the land	p. 220
Getting out of the hole in Nelson	p. 227
Eminent domain : evicted to create Pisgah Park	p. 233
Recollections : Pisgah, a place apart	p. 239
The return of the wild	p. 243
Introduction	p. 253
Taxi	p. 255
Il Sentimento della Casa (a sense of home)	p. 262
"This is a great country, and don't forget it"	p. 268
The last mill in town	p. 271
Recollections : the working life, I. Marlborough Mill	p. 276
Recollections : the working life, II. Lawrence Tannery	p. 278
"How did it go today?"	p. 282
Letter : and not so well for others	p. 285
Drawing our desires : the endless Keene bypass controversy	p. 287
Recollections : the last train out of town	p. 293
Quiet Boomtown	p. 296
Report : New Hampshire by the numbers	p. 305
Is there a Monadnock land ethic?	p. 306
Report : the last hurrah for New England thrift; or, use it once, toss it out, buy more	p. 317
Mr. Roy's market	p. 318
Our town	p. 326
My favorite views of the mountain	p. 329
Directions to some of the places in this book	p. 331
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