It's called Grandfather Mountain because, coming from Foscoe, it looks like the profile of a bearded man and because, geologically speaking, it’s older than most anything else on the planet. And about the experience of visiting—in the snowy cold, in whipping winds, in the time of flowering serviceberry or rhododendron, when blueberries and bagpipes arrive down on McCrae Meadows or when clouds cotton-stuff the valleys and leaves melt into reds and yellows and violets—in all those times, you’re in a zone of overwhelming gratitude. And you wonder: what could have possibly been so important to have pressed me down before I rose to the occasion of coming here?
In working with all this as a consultant to the mountain, our main challenge came down to discovering the most compelling reason for visits across seasons and to detailing enough of the experience—manmade and natural—to attract first-timers.
After focus groups led us to feelings and biases, we developed Nature on a whole different level and reworked all image materials, gate package and advertising, which later informed a comprehensive web site.
Looking back on the many years of connection with Grandfather, there are few experiences on Earth that can match crossing a “closed” summit parking lot behind Harris Prevost in a hundred-mile-an-hour gale. (As Catherine Morton says, “This is a serious mountain.”)
I am deeply appreciative of my friendship with the Morton family through years of connection with Grandfather and, as always, with Harris and Scottie Prevost.
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