By Stamati Anagnostou, SCA Interpretive Ranger at Monadnock State Park
The time approaches and is not quite here when the forests that sail down and away from Monadnock will rise in effervescent praise of winter, just before its heat death silences them. For now we wait in earnest anticipation, watching every leaf as they shift to red like the galaxies which also soar into the depths of cold. Yet we exult in the change of the season for exactly the spectacle which it produces. And we are not exempt from the change.
Our bodies fight the coming frost with outbursts of energy that propel us forth upon the slopes of Monadnock like a mighty deluge from a worn and splintered dam. The dreamscape of the summit expands our heads and hearts- an entheogen administered by the vast landscape before us. A metropolis sputters to the East, staggering peaks utter strange incantations to the North. And we are witnesses to it all. Our minds burst with ideas which our hands bring into realization. Our mouths utter dreams that await fruition in the inevitable winter which is so near and has not yet come! And we, we are witnesses to the crescendo!
