No one really knows for sure when it happened. The best guess says the event occurred sometime between the dark night of Friday and the lonely early morning hours of Saturday. A moist fog had covered the Cannon Mountains since Thursday. The rain only intensified on Friday, with nearly an inch pouring down into the deep crevices of the wrinkles in the weary face of the Old Man.

But it was the fatal freeze that finally did him in. As the evening turned into night, the temperatures plunged twenty degrees to within two degrees of the all-time low of 22⁰ set in 1966. The wind and rain, the freezing and thawing, the brittle sun-borne baking had taken their toll. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t keep Humpty Dumpty from falling again.

And fall he did. His chin gave way first. That was the keystone. For more than twelve thousand years, the weight of the four granite slabs above it rested on this protruding piece. Perhaps giving new meaning to “sticking your chin out,” nearly 80% of this bottom piece projected into thin air with no visible means of support. The remainder of the chunk of rock – a mere two feet in total – rested on the mountain’s ledge. This is where the Continue Reading “Old Granite Face Proves the Futility of Man Against Nature”