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THE OLD MAN SPEAKS: A Storyteller’s History of the White Mountains

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

THE OLD MAN SPEAKS: A Storyteller’s History of the White Mountains

It is 1819 on Mt. Washington. Far above the treeline in the harsh wind, a father and son chop away the last gnarled dwarf firs. Ahead lies bare rock, all the way to the summit. Little do they know, but their hiking path is the first of its kind anywhere. In a young, robust America, people will soon flock to their strange invention. This is the dawn of outdoor mountain sports.

THE OLD MAN SPEAKS is the oral history of those first trail blazers, and the two hundred years of trail builders who followed.

Written and narrated by Storyteller Odds Bodkin as The Old Man of the Mountain, here’s a 71-minute epic of American history, scored with original music on six- and twelve-string guitars and Celtic harp. Commissioned and edited by Robert White of the White Mountain Trail Crew.

If you’re a teacher, parent, student, history buff or outdoor enthusiast, here is a story that you’ll love, again and again. Meet Abel and Ethan Crawford as they build the Crawford Path in 1819. Glimpse wilderness America before paved roads existed. Imagine millions of now extinct Passenger Pigeons darkening the sky with flocks that took three days to pass. Learn how a moose’s bladder is a ready-made canteen. Hear how commerce developed in New England from paths to roads to railroads. Witness the founding of the Appalachian Mountain Club by professors from MIT. Get close to the White Mountain Trail Crew–the hardiest of elite young outdoorsmen, and women–and see what equipment they carry to maintain the trails. Watch them run up the mountains of a public park that is busier than Yellowstone, a place with the worst weather on earth.

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Original acoustic music written and performed by Odds Bodkin.

71 minutes

112 mb

©2022 Odds Bodkin All Rights Reserved

THE OLD MAN SPEAKS: A Story for the AMC Trail Crew

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Here’s a quick preview of this new commissioned work, to be debuted in August 2019.

Legendary for Toughness

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

When you think of physical toughness, who comes to mind? Army Rangers? Navy Seals? Elite athletes? Well, add one more category: the White Mountains Professional Trail Crew of the Appalachian Mountain Club. With 80 pound packs on their backs, they are known for sprinting the trails of the Presidential Range, including Mt. Washington. Steep trails. Up into the clouds, in sun or fog or downpours, they run at full speed with their axes, freeing the forest trails of downed trees and hoisting five hundred pound rocks around to build stairs.

Every hiker who has ever climbed New Hampshire’s White Mountains has walked over bridges the Trail Crew has built, or rock stairs they have constructed. You don’t see them much. When you pass a sign that reads, “Trail Closed,” that’s where they are. A crew of men and women, living in the open for long stretches of time, unable to bathe for days, covered with spruce pitch to fend off bugs. A wild bunch. Smelly. Dirty. When they emerge from the trees to surprise hikers, they often resemble something out of Deliverance. Many hail from the country’s best universities.

Founded in 1919, the AMC Professional Trail Crew is a hundred years old this summer, and to celebrate their centennial on Mt. Washington this August, they’ve asked me to tell their story.

I’ve been working on it for a year. It’s called THE OLD MAN SPEAKS.

More to follow.