The Eye of the Elephant
I'm going to have to check this one out for myself. There's a place nearby that has the potential to send my heart racing for all the natural beauty and intense foreboding danger it possesses yet there is no trail leading to it. Over the years, since I was in my twenties actually, I have paid this place perhaps half a dozen visits yet from a distance I have probably peered out over Wilson Pond and seen this place hundreds of thousands of times, if not more. It's called the Eye of the Elephant.
The Eye of the Elephant is on the west slope of the southern end of Elephant Mountain ten miles or so east of Greenville. Looking east at Elephant Mountain from Lower Wilson Pond, Upper Wilson Pond, or the hillside between the Greenville airport and Lower Wilson, the eye is clearly visible on the right side of the mountain. It is formed by ledge that juts out forming an overhang beneath which is a long steeply-sloped rock slide. Elephant Mountain is so named because from this same perspective the right end of the mountain forms what the imagination can easily perceive to be an elephant's head complete with an eye, a mouth, a trunk, and even whatever they call that nob on the top of an elephant's head. I'm sure somebody creative could even find an ear. The elephant is facing and looking south. This rock overhang has been the eye for as long as I've been in the world and for God only knows how many centuries before that.
The rock slide is an accumulation of large rocks that have collected from the erosion of this rock overhang. Occasionally over the years I have looked at this slide from a distance and thought to myself there's something different this year, like something new broke off and tumbled down the slide. All this summer, though, I've been saying to myself there's something really different up there. The slide looks brownish instead of its usual lichen gray and it seems quite a bit longer extending down into the spruce forest below. This spruce forest grows from a shady bed of moss-covered boulders that when I have been up close and personal among them I have always thought was one of the most beautiful sites around this area.
On several occasions I have worked my way up and to the left of the outcropping and up onto the top of the eye's brow. I even have a picture somewhere of my son standing out on that brow looking out at the view to the west over Wilson Pond and Moosehead Lake. He had jumped across a wide fissure and was standing on a relatively flat area on what seemed to me to be a huge boulder in the making, something that eventually some winter would fall. He went out there but I wouldn't!
So I was in the library yesterday and saw an article in the local paper written by local guide and author Chris Keene who had heard about a new addition to this rock slide and had been out there just recently and had been amazed by the size of the boulder and by the path it had carved down through the trees beyond the slide. Thank you Chris for that article and for exploring where paths fear to tread.
Chris did include a warning which sure rings a bell for me. There is a sense of danger being out there on that slide. You just can't escape it. It's almost as if as you look up, up, way up there at the eye and the outcropping ledge which always used to cast a midday shadow beneath it, it's as if you expect a large rock to break off and come flying down that slide aimed right directly at you. For me at least it's a feeling I can't escape. It's like yeah I was there but I sure don't recommend it for anyone who might blame me if they were to get hurt out there. Chris basically shared that same sentiment in his article.
I haven't been doing any hiking lately but I think this bushwhacking venture might be on my bucket list again. I approach the slide from the south, from the road in to Horseshoe Pond rather than from the west but I usually miss my target. Just south of the slide is a steep slope of almost impenetrable young softwood, thick as anything I've ever been in, but there is, or was at least until this summer, a target zone, that mossy boulder-strewn spruce forest. I've missed that on a few occasions, though, passing below this area, below the slide, below the rocky spruce forest, and beyond to the north side of things into woods that disoriented my bushwhacking head. It's not easy on that mountainside to say to yourself I must have missed the slide, I should turn back and go a little higher up but that has always worked for me.
The three times that I've been to the top of the eye's brow I have approached it from the left looking up. The first time I went up there I went too far to the left and wound up on a smooth steeply-sloped open ledge surface that was like being on a steep roof. I thought for sure I was going to slip and slide down that ledge and die up there. I think that was the time I rode my bicycle out to Elephant Mountain from town and encountered a huge bull moose on my return to town. He jumped out into the road in front of me and stopped and just stared at me for awhile while tingles of fear rose up my spine. He wasn't close enough to touch but I didn't have any problem conversing with him while he stood and stared me down and blocked the road.
Elephant Mountain is also the site of the B-52 bomber wreck from 1963, now a memorial site and tourist attraction.
The Eye of the Elephant is on the west slope of the southern end of Elephant Mountain ten miles or so east of Greenville. Looking east at Elephant Mountain from Lower Wilson Pond, Upper Wilson Pond, or the hillside between the Greenville airport and Lower Wilson, the eye is clearly visible on the right side of the mountain. It is formed by ledge that juts out forming an overhang beneath which is a long steeply-sloped rock slide. Elephant Mountain is so named because from this same perspective the right end of the mountain forms what the imagination can easily perceive to be an elephant's head complete with an eye, a mouth, a trunk, and even whatever they call that nob on the top of an elephant's head. I'm sure somebody creative could even find an ear. The elephant is facing and looking south. This rock overhang has been the eye for as long as I've been in the world and for God only knows how many centuries before that.
The rock slide is an accumulation of large rocks that have collected from the erosion of this rock overhang. Occasionally over the years I have looked at this slide from a distance and thought to myself there's something different this year, like something new broke off and tumbled down the slide. All this summer, though, I've been saying to myself there's something really different up there. The slide looks brownish instead of its usual lichen gray and it seems quite a bit longer extending down into the spruce forest below. This spruce forest grows from a shady bed of moss-covered boulders that when I have been up close and personal among them I have always thought was one of the most beautiful sites around this area.
On several occasions I have worked my way up and to the left of the outcropping and up onto the top of the eye's brow. I even have a picture somewhere of my son standing out on that brow looking out at the view to the west over Wilson Pond and Moosehead Lake. He had jumped across a wide fissure and was standing on a relatively flat area on what seemed to me to be a huge boulder in the making, something that eventually some winter would fall. He went out there but I wouldn't!
So I was in the library yesterday and saw an article in the local paper written by local guide and author Chris Keene who had heard about a new addition to this rock slide and had been out there just recently and had been amazed by the size of the boulder and by the path it had carved down through the trees beyond the slide. Thank you Chris for that article and for exploring where paths fear to tread.
Chris did include a warning which sure rings a bell for me. There is a sense of danger being out there on that slide. You just can't escape it. It's almost as if as you look up, up, way up there at the eye and the outcropping ledge which always used to cast a midday shadow beneath it, it's as if you expect a large rock to break off and come flying down that slide aimed right directly at you. For me at least it's a feeling I can't escape. It's like yeah I was there but I sure don't recommend it for anyone who might blame me if they were to get hurt out there. Chris basically shared that same sentiment in his article.
I haven't been doing any hiking lately but I think this bushwhacking venture might be on my bucket list again. I approach the slide from the south, from the road in to Horseshoe Pond rather than from the west but I usually miss my target. Just south of the slide is a steep slope of almost impenetrable young softwood, thick as anything I've ever been in, but there is, or was at least until this summer, a target zone, that mossy boulder-strewn spruce forest. I've missed that on a few occasions, though, passing below this area, below the slide, below the rocky spruce forest, and beyond to the north side of things into woods that disoriented my bushwhacking head. It's not easy on that mountainside to say to yourself I must have missed the slide, I should turn back and go a little higher up but that has always worked for me.
The three times that I've been to the top of the eye's brow I have approached it from the left looking up. The first time I went up there I went too far to the left and wound up on a smooth steeply-sloped open ledge surface that was like being on a steep roof. I thought for sure I was going to slip and slide down that ledge and die up there. I think that was the time I rode my bicycle out to Elephant Mountain from town and encountered a huge bull moose on my return to town. He jumped out into the road in front of me and stopped and just stared at me for awhile while tingles of fear rose up my spine. He wasn't close enough to touch but I didn't have any problem conversing with him while he stood and stared me down and blocked the road.
Elephant Mountain is also the site of the B-52 bomber wreck from 1963, now a memorial site and tourist attraction.
posted by Bill | 10:34 AM
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