From Gile to Saint-Gaudens

We had a lovely weekend visit with Rick and Linda.  On Saturday, after a walk through the Norwich Farmers’ Market and lunch at King Arthur Flour, we hiked the Gile Mountain trail in Norwich.  This is easily the closest and shortest hike to get a great view. A twenty minute car ride from the farm, and the car does most of the climbing. Another easy twenty minute hike to the top on a very well maintained trail (with lots of stair steps and even bluestone on spots of the path). The payoff? A fire tower at the top (86 stairs) that rises well above the tree line.

Peg and I hiked it the weekend before, and she stopped two flights from the top.  This weekend she stopped only one flight from the top. She explained she likes having a roof over her head. Rick, Linda and I shared the top with a mountain biker, who confirmed to me that the large white structure off to the south is Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. He also pointed out the white steeple that is on Dartmouth’s campus in Hanover and the end of the runway in West Lebanon.

There is an old cabin – The Shredd Shed – near the fire tower, but apparently overnight camping is not allowed. Graffiti, however, seems to be just fine.

Between KAF and Gile, I drove the gang by a solar panel installation that is pretty cool. Offered by a local company – Solaflect – the Suspension Tracker follows the sun throughout the day, and despite appearances can withstand high wind speeds.  The company’s President came by the farm last week and gave us a proposal. We could place one near the top of the driveway on the east side of the house and get 95% solar exposure, losing 5% to trees to the southwest only around the end of December. He said our site is one of the best he’s seen. Someday.

After Gile, we pretty much hung out in the Adirondack chairs at the top of the west field the rest of the afternoon. Sipping some microbrews Rick had brought, we thoroughly enjoyed watching Marty and a crew of three helpers bale hay in the lower west field. Marty drove his John Deere with the baler and a hay wagon behind it. Every once in a while a bale would fall out and either Marty or one of the crew would toss it back in. One crew member – probably his son Tim – would take a wagon full of hay to the barn across the street, while Marty would hook up another wagon and keep baling. With the Kubota, Tim would push the wagon into the dark barn, and no more than 10 minutes later he’d pull out an empty wagon and take it back to the field for another switch with Marty.  Quite an efficient operation.

Late Sunday morning, we ventured down to the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish. Peg has wanted to visit the park for quite some time. We didn’t really know much about who Saint-Gaudens was, but had heard the park is a nice visit.

(But before we left, Peg brought down the hanging plant by the back door to show off the nest that had been built by a junco bird.  Rick made the identification.)

Upon arriving (about a 30 minute drive from the farm), Linda pulled out her lifetime National Park pass. Once we reach 62, we’ll be sure to get one. Linda bought it at Acadia National Park in Maine, and it got all four of us in. ONLY TEN DOLLARS! As the Park Ranger at the gate said, “If you lose it, buy another one. We don’t keep track of them.” The Ranger also suggested we visit the house first, then the studios, and the visitor center (where we could watch an 18 minute video) last. As Peg said, “so we can learn about what we just saw.” The reasoning behind the Ranger’s itinerary was that a concert would be starting at 2 pm and the house was only open from noon to 12:30 (and it was 11:55 when we arrived).

We walked through the first floor of the house, which didn’t do much for me. It was built in the early 1800s. It has a beautiful huge thornless honey locust in front that was planted in 1886 – I didn’t take a photo but should have. (Most of the facts to come are from the guide brochure I picked up at the gate.) To the west of the house are equally beautiful gardens offering a great view to the south with Mt. Ascutney prominently featured.

In the “Little Studio” a musician was tuning up a stringed instrument I don’t think any of us had ever seen before – a theorbo. Linda asked him how many strings the long-necked lute has, and his response was priceless: “Fourteen, and there’s the rub.” He was still tuning it when we departed at least 10 minutes later.

Before I write anything more, it is time to introduce Augustus Saint-Gaudens. He was an Irish-born, New York City raised sculptor. At 13, he apprenticed as a cameo cutter and attended art classes at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. At 19, his father sent him to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1870 he moved to Rome for five years where he studied more and received his first commissions. He returned to the United States and received his first major commission in 1876 – a monument to Civil War Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (“Damn the Torpedos, Full Steam Ahead”). The park brochure labels him as the “sculptor of the American Renaissance”. In addition to statues and busts, he did many portrait reliefs, several of which line the walls of the Little Studio.

The prominent feature in the Little Studio is a copy of the statue of Diana, which was a working weather vane on top of the old Madison Square Garden from 1893 until it was torn down in 1925. The original is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Moving on, we stopped by a copy of the Adams Memorial, commissioned by historian Henry Adams to commemorate his wife (who killed herself). The original is in Rock Creek Cemetary in Washington, D.C. Next, across a large, well-maintained lawn and tucked into the trees at the top of a steep ravine, we visited the Ravine Studio, where sculptor-in-residence John was kind enough to talk with us and answer our questions. He was working on a wax relief of a rabbit running with leaves in the background. He described how a wax relief gets turned into a bronze relief, and I think I understand most of his explanation.

Next stop, the Shaw Memorial. To me, this is the most impressive piece in the park. Commissioned in 1883 to commemorate first regiment of African American volunteers in the Civil War, it took 14 years to complete and the original sits on the edge of Boston Common.

On to the Farragut Monument and the New Gallery and Atrium, which offered many more statues, reliefs, and even coins that Saint-Gaudens designed. Theodore Roosevelt asked him to design the 10 and 20 dollar gold coins which were minted from shortly after Saint-Gaudens’ death in 1907 until 1933.

Finally, the Visitors Center for the video. Saint-Gaudens originally rented the old inn for summers beginning in 1885.  He purchased it in 1892 and his family continued to summer there until 1900, when it became his year-round home.

All told, we were at the park a little less than two hours.  It is another great attraction close to Savage Hart Farm in the Upper Valley.

Todd