Issues → September/October 2008 → Features → Mount Monadnock Classic Stories from Yankee →
The Monadnock Roar
(page 4 of 4)
We stayed that way for awhile, Eliot cradled in my arms while I listened to his breathing and waited for the sound of voices to come and help us. I remember thinking how sad it was that we had been defeated. There was much we had overcome, much we had accomplished, but not to make it all the way, on our own, was in reality a defeat.
It was then I heard the roar. Eliot swore he never heard a thing. But I know I did. It was the kind of sound that turns hair white. A deep, fierce, almost deafening roast.
I froze, my heart pounding, my mind racing. Then I lifted Eliot, struggled up the slippery incline to the trail, and sat him down on it. I barely remember doing it, but Eliot said it was a practically supernatural feat, and if he hadn't been there, he would never have believed it.
Then we laughed. A little at first, then uncontrollably. The rain began to stop, and we hugged each other. Then we cried, both of us this time.
After awhile Eliot mumbled something about "finishing the deed," stood up, and held out his hand for me. I took it and got up. Together, singing the score to Fiddler on the Roof, we made our way down Mt. Monadnock. My son, my friend, and the rescue party were just about to start out when we came into view of the cars.
Two months later my family and I left the halfway house and rented a small cottage in Peterborough, New Hampshire. We could see Mt. Monadnock from our backyard. Just before winter set in, Eliot and some of the others from the house came to visit us. We had a nice time sitting in lawn chairs while looking at the mountain and reminiscing. Eliot had a hard time containing himself as he watched me unwrap the present he had brought me. It was a book about Mt. Monadnock, and it had a pigeon feather in it marking the page that Eliot thought I'd be most interested in reading.
Of course, Eliot was right. It said that although no one had reported having heard the phenomenon known as the "Monadnock Roar" for years, Henry David Thoreau had heard it once during a storm when he had injured his leg and was desperately trying to get down. It said that Thoreau rarely talked about it because people thought he was crazy enough already. It then went on to give some scientific explanation as to what might cause the roar, but I'm sure that Henry wouldn't have been impressed with that either.
I never saw Eliot again. He died several months later when, in another one of his attempts to be normal, he went off his medications and froze to death in an alley after having a seizure. No one ever found out why he was in the alley.
I've climbed Mt. Monadnock several times since that day when I climbed it with Eliot, and I'm sure that I'll climb it again. I don't think I'll ever hear the roar, though. Something like that probably happens only once in a lifetime. But I do know that it was real. It was as real as the life of Eliot Elanman -- and almost as important.
Reader Comments
Comment from probyn gregory on November 7, 2009
I am the only one I know alive now that has heard the Roar. It awoke me and my grandparents at their Jaffrey house on the south slopes of Monadnock sometime ca. 1973. Since I only caught the tail end of it, i can only describe it as a deep, rather mournful sound, akin somewhat to King Kong as he is trapped by the humans. My grandparents were well read and told me that Thoreau had heard it, and I think Pumpelly too, and they claimed it was to do with wind hitting a south-facing canyon just SO. Tangentially, I was up on Saddleback Mtn. in Phoenix earlier this year and met a developmentally disabled person on the trail named Eliot, we did the summit and down together, and have stayed in email touch.
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