One of my father’s most elaborate family vacation expeditions came when I was 9 and my sister was seven. He plotted a two-week auto tour of all the “natural wonders” of nearby New Hampshire along with quite a few non-natural sort-of-wonders in the Granite State—strange museums, odd theme parks, and the equivalents of Clark Griswald’s “World’s Biggest Ball of String.” I loved that trip for its random weirdness: it was one of the family excursions I remember most vividly.

One of the attractions Dad led us to was “The Flume,” a natural 800-foot-long granite gorge in Franconia Notch State Park in Lincoln, New Hampshire. There were lots of “wonders”to see there: The Flume Covered Bridge, Avalanche Falls, Table Rock, Sentinel Pine Bridge, The Pool, and a tight boulder tunnel known as the Wolf’s Den. It took about an hour and a half to traverse the winding trail on foot, an adventure featuring wooden boardwalks, packed gravel, steep grades and many stairs. Another attraction on Dad’s itinerary was the striking “Hanging Boulder” at the Polar Caves in Rumney, N.H. Somewhere there’s a photo of me and my sister standing exactly where that guy and his baby were posing above. Yet another was the legendary “Great Stone Face,” immortalized in a Nathanial Hawthorne story and used to describe silent movie genius Buster Keaton. Remember it?

That wonder crumbled and fell in 2003. And on October 18, 2026, Hanging Boulder came crashing down too. The boulder had been an attraction in the park since it opened more than 100 years ago, but is no more.

I don’t get nostalgic over rocks, but the news hit me surprisingly hard. Dad died in his sleep in 2009. Just because something has been around your whole life and seemingly forever doesn’t mean that it will always be there. That’s the life competence lesson.