Legend Retold: The Small Gray Rabbit and the Great Stone Face

The Great Stone Face in Franconia, New Hampshire, was a geologic formation that, when viewed from the north, appeared to be the profile of a gigantic head with the facial features of brow, nose, cheek and chin plainly discernable. Modern culture says that it was in the year 1805 that the profile was discovered by surveyors working in and around today’s Franconia Notch. Yet there is another story that tells of the origin of the Great Stone Face. This other story is thousands of years older and is part of native lore.

It is told among the First People that the Great Stone Face was that of a young tribal leader whose love and dedication to one woman caused him to abandon all else and maintain a patient vigil, awaiting her return. The rock cliff was transfigured, some say, by glaciers, but the First People knew it to have been shaped by the spirits to commemorate the depth and strength of the love this man felt for his beloved.

He was a tribal leader among his people; his bride was the daughter of another tribal leader in a neighboring but distant tribe. When they first joined together as a couple, the young bride chose to honor her husband and recognize his importance in his own tribe. She therefore chose to leave the tribe of her mother and father and join her husband in his.

After many years of great happiness as a couple, the young woman received word one day that her aged father had taken ill and had asked for her to come to his side. The couple decided that she alone would make the journey and that he would stay and administer his leadership duties.

The anguish of their separation, the first since their union, was to be softened by an evening ritual they could share despite their distance from each other.

At the time just before sunset, the young man would walk out alone to the crest of the ragged cliff that overlooked a vast landscape of streams, meadowland and huge stretches of dense forest where the trees hugged each other close, keeping their green canopy unbroken.

The young woman, throughout her long journey to her father’s side, would make camp each evening and light her fire at the time just before sunset. At the place where she had begun her journey, far back on the trail, there rose the huge stone cliffs upon which sat her dedicated and patient lover, waiting and watching for her sign.

Each evening, at the time just before sunset, he saw the smoke plume rise through the dense canopy of trees and thus, while sunset closed the day, the lovers could feel the bond between them and separation was bearable. So it continued: as each day concluded and sunset approached, he climbed the rocks leading to the cliff atop which he would sit to look out along the trail. And she, miles further on her journey, would build her campfire so that the rising smoke plume would tell him of the progress in her travel.

Sunset upon sunset the ritual was shared even as the plume grew farther and smaller. He came at the end of each day to wait for her signal. Yet one evening he saw no smoke. And the next sunset found him waiting still… gazing expectantly far along the trail. There was no signal, no sign that his love traveled onward. Even the next night, and the next, he waited, believing… and he waited in vain, each evening thereafter, until the end of his days.

What the man never knew was that his beloved bride, the woman with whom he had built a life of hopes and dreams, had died… she was gone from his world.

She was traveling alone…  Some time on the morning after the last sighting of smoke, she was seen by renegades. As they took up pursuit, she ran for her life. Her flight was swift, too swift… Running blindly, trying to achieve safety, she abruptly burst from thick woods onto a cliff, high over a cold mountain river. She had no chance to stop. Her pursuers heard only her terrified voice as she fell… landing, lifeless, amidst sharp boulders hidden in the dark currents of the river.

On the balcony just outside my apartment, stands a small statue that should be a garden ornament. It’s a rabbit, standing upright on hind legs with front paws clasped together and its eyes fixed in a penetrating gaze, locked on an imagined horizon. It stands twenty-six inches tall and is made from some sort of cast concrete.

This pensive garden rabbit is nearly identical to another rabbit statue made of finely sculpted papier-mâché that my wife and I discovered in an antique store near the oceanside resort where we celebrated one of our wedding anniversaries. Which year anniversary it was remains a bit foggy to me.

In contrast, my recollection of the warm glow of love that radiated from around that hand-formed papier-mâché rabbit is distinct… it appeared as if caressed by the dwindling light of a slow sunset.

Years later, upon her departure from our marriage, she, rightfully, took the papier-mâché rabbit with her. It was subsequently placed on an artful shelf on the wall, high above her new living room.

The cement statue that I retained from those glorious years with my beloved became symbolic. Its near duplication of the height, posture and size of the papier-mâché rabbit which now stood faithfully elsewhere, made my concrete replica its emotional twin.

Years have passed since that rabbit went away… and although I have several times moved to smaller and smaller domains as my needs for great space dwindled, my copy of the rabbit always had a place from which to gaze, faithfully, patiently, awaiting the return of the beloved.

One winter morning, as a weakened Sun washed through the bare branches of slumbering trees, I looked out at my steadfast rabbit… I saw the cracks…

All across its fine, long ears ran tiny fissures of noticeable width: winter freezing along invisible lines of stress had fractured the casting.

There was nothing I could do.

There was no magic, no prayer that could impel the beloved to return; even as the statue symbolized the promise of faithfully waiting, it was deteriorating, breaking down with the inevitable passing of time.

I knew I had to let it go.

The pain of unfulfilled expectation yields to the pain of resignation.

The crushing weight of letting go seemed to become heavier, even as the burden was lifted. More days and months passed, and on a sparkling morning that smelled of springtime and rebirth I looked out onto my patio and was stopped cold… stunned in disbelief…

The garden rabbit, made of cast concrete had crumbled.

Gone were the great ears that seemed to listen for a certain voice… gone were the nose and eyes and even the once outstretched neck… all broken into small pieces, nearly dust… victim of its own naive dedication and belief, it had stood… waiting… gazing out along an unseen trail, through seasons uncounted.

In Franconia, New Hampshire, on May 3rd one year, the huge sections of glacier-sculpted stone that made up the formation of the Great Stone Face collapsed in a slow, sad cascade.

The patient and dedicated watch by the love-torn husband came to an end as the pressures of the burden and the long years had finally claimed their kin.

The Great Stone Face was no more.

The waiting rabbit was no more.

The watch was over… the inevitable and natural wearing and grinding down that overcomes even the strongest material had ended the painfully protracted wait.

Thus was one of the most tender and seemingly durable loves overwhelmed and eventually crushed by the realities of an uncompromising world.