About a mile down the road from here in Mackeral Cove there’s a rock sticking out of the water. It’s a favorite perch for cormorants spreading their wings and I’ve taken dozens of pix of it for the sheer joy of the birds.
But one misty morning I met an old woman walking her dog down there. She said, “The Princess looks beautiful this morning, don’t you think?”
I thought, of course, that she was talking about her pooch, and noised an answer.
“No,” she said. "The rock in the cove. It’s called the Indian Princess. Can you see her outline?”
And by god, there it was. The head is thrown back and her face looks to the distant shore. Pretty impressive. Now I can’t see the rock any other way.
And, of course, that got me thinking about the Old Man of the Mountain in Franconia Notch. He’s been there for at least centuries in the mountains of NH, (local indians referred to him as far back as 1604) though he was “discovered” in 1805. Hawthorne wrote a story about the  benevolent old man rock formation and Dan Webster once said, "Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."
Vacation scrapbooks since the beginning of photography have included his snap.
His head was secured with turnbuckles to keep him intact since the early 20th century. But last year he sheared off and smashed to the ground- his nose and forehead took the hit. People grieved, including me, because I’d never taken the trip north to see him. There was even a “Family Remembrance Day” held up there for folks to share their sorrow.
I should be so lucky.
(photo from availability.com website)
10:49:58 AM 
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