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I scramble along
the knife-edged rock that serves as a sharp warning signal. Beyond this
outcropping the earth disappears into a 50-foot chasm of air. In the empty space below me the
rooftops of neighborhood homes look like gray footsteps left by some giant’s passing.
I spread my arms and move along the rock edge as if a tight-rope-walker. Where a spruce tree has
taken root, the outcropping widens. Just beyond it is the place I’ve come to see: a round slab of
granite bedrock known around here as the Devil’s Chair.
The Devils Chair is a natural seat in the big slab of granite. For centuries people from town have
climbed up here in order to gaze down on the streets and hills of their home. But instead of the
dramatic view, I am squinting at the rock itself. I scramble over the granite on my hands and knees,
brushing away leaves and peeling back the moss until I see the first of several initials carved into the
rock. I can’t make out the letters, but the date, 1852, is still faintly legible. Most of carvings are
rough scratches in the hard stone, but one set stands out for it appears to have been chiseled by a
professional.
I kneel at the naturally sculpted seat which gave Devil’s Chair its name. On the upright slab which
serves as the back of the chair, is what I have come to find: the three initials and a date: WHH
May 14, 1876. The lettering is as perfect as if set in printer’s type. The pointed toes on the foot of
each “H” and the round ears at tail of each numeral were carved by someone who knew the printer’s
trade.
From research I’ve learned that the town’s leading printer in 1876 was a man by the name of William
H Hawes: WHH May 14, 1876 was warm, sunny Sunday: the first beautiful day after a very
long gray winter. Spring was about to burst. William H Hawes climbed up from town in the warming
sunlight carrying his chisel and hammer. It would take him a while to chisel his name in the granite,
but then, there was no hurry. He could rest, sitting on Devil’s Chair and looking out on the town
below. Without leaves on the trees, he would have been able to hear the voices of his neighbors.
According to the local newspaper, around noon on May 14, 1876, the day William Hawes chiseled
his name into the seat-back of Devil’s Chair, a fight broke out between three men on the street
just below this cliff. It turns out one of the men, John McCutcheon, had just been the victim of a
prank. The other two men had plucked all the feathers from his prize rooster. McCutcheon had
chased them from his henhouse and then grabbed his gun. “I’ll show you fellows how to pluck
a rooster,” he had shouted, but just as he raised his rifle in the air, his wife grabbed the gun.
The two pranksters ran away.
I run my fingers over the deeply carved figures. Nearly 125 years ago a
man sat here on a sunny Sunday scratching at a stone, hoping to leave his mark on the world.
Below him, three men argued about a rooster. By sheer chance —
and some lucky research —
an instant from long ago appears before me as real as the air. I look up from the neat lettering on
the rock, and out into the countryside. Straight below this cliff, three children hurry by on bicycles;
in the distance a truck winds through its gears climbing a hill on the interstate; somewhere off over
there, the cool light laughter of a woman filters up to me through the canopy of green. This is my
instant in time, and just like WHH, and just like the men who argued that warm Sunday, there’s
no knowing which fragments of my time on earth will linger and which will fade with the passing of
seasons.
This is Alan Boye just walking the hills of Vermont.
Reprinted with permission
from “Just Walking the Hills of Vermont”
Vermont Public Radio
Copyright © 1999
by Alan Boye
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