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.