Mount Washington, then and now

We visited New Hampshire recently, a weekend getaway destination of ours for decades.  From North Conway, you can enjoy this sweeping vista of Mount Washington and the MW Valley (click for a larger view).  Here’s a bit of info on Mt. Washington from Wikipedia:

Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at 6,288 ft (1,917 m) and the most prominent mountain east of the Mississippi River. It is famous for dangerously erratic weather. For 76 years, until 2010, a weather observatory on the summit held the record for the highest wind gust directly measured at the Earth’s surface, 231 mph (372 km/h or 103 m/s), on the afternoon of April 12, 1934. Before European settlers arrived, the mountain was known as Agiocochook, or “Home of the Great Spirit”.

In doing this not very extensive research, I learned that:

Mount Washington has been the subject of several famous paintings, part of a New England school of art known as White Mountain art. Inspired by the Hudson River School of landscape painting, a number of artists during the Victorian era ventured into the White Mountains in search of natural subjects. Conway became their base, first arriving by coach and boarding at farmhouses, then in the 1870s by train to newly opened inns and hotels. They created a flood of paintings that found their way around the world.

And then I found this:

This is Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway, by artist John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872), painted in 1869.  Comparing Kensett’s painting to my panorama above, I can see similarities in the face of Mt. Washington itself, and the smaller hills in the mid-ground.  I might have been standing pretty close to where the artist created his canvas.  It was a bit humbling.

It’s also reassuring to know that despite the craziness of this world, there is constancy in Mother Nature.

Sony NEX 6, sweep panorama mode, edited in Lightroom 4.

Advertisement