Come along William Culllen Bryant,
let us beckon Melville, Hawthorne to convene,
along with Umpachanee and Konkapot – all the best
Shall meet at Monument Mountain, and follow
Mohican Monument Trail, through the seasons
of the soul, to Peeskawso Peak, and there to rest.
Dave Read
Peeskawso is a Mohican word for “virtuous woman.”
Literary Shrine in the Berkshires
What Lourdes, France is for global religious tourism, Monument Mountain is for devotees of American literature. A sudden cloudburst brought Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville shoulder to shoulder as they sought refuge under an outcropping en route to a very fancy picnic on the summit of Monument Mountain on August 5, 1850.
Same mountain, earlier poem:
Paean to an Eminence
This geologic oddment in the Berkshires,
our bald uncle, with busted nose, looms
where echo of the penultimate Mohican sounds,
unperturbed by pale poets, disturbers of myth,
who revere the Hawthorne-Melville rain delay.
Snug as it would fit in the hopper of majestic Mount Greylock,
for us with tastes prosaic, Monument Mountain is our pet rock.
– Dave Read
(Paean to an Eminence was published by Trustees of Reservations, 2008, Views of Monument Mountain.)