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“Monadnock: The Mountain that Stands Alone,” tells the story of the second most climbed mountain in the world, Mount Monadnock. (Mount Fuji, in Japan, with 300,000 climbers a year is the first.) Some of the famous writers and thinkers who were inspired by its iconic peak include Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.

It was a pleasure to be a small part of this documentary which highlights the importance and power of grassroots preservation efforts. Both my son Jesse and I were interviewed at the Ndakinna Education Center. Jesse also helped to score the film, offering his original music on flute throughout.

As a poet who has often been inspired by that “literary mountain” and others, I should point out that the film quotes the words of several writers who responded to the living spirit of Monadnock. In fact, before I ever climbed to its peak, I experienced the way that place can bring you not just closer to nature, but in contact with your deeper self through reading “Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock,” published in 1964 by my old friend, the wonderful poet Galway Kinnell. 

Here are a few lines from that poem (which can be found in its entirety on the Poetry Foundation website):

From a rock

A waterfall,

A single trickle like a strand of wire,

Breaks into beads halfway down.

I know

The birds fly off

But the hug of the earth wraps

With moss their graves and the giant boulders.

Moments such as those Galway seized 60 years ago are captured in almost every frame of the documentary. For much more about this important film please visit PBS.

Full Film Below (wliwini NB9D: ON THE AIR):

To read more of my father’s daily blogs, check out GENERATIONS