High and cold up here near the top of the pass, this is a fit place to tell you about the greatest sachem these mountains ever knew — Passaconaway himself, grandfather of the chief this road is named for. They call me Ranger Boone.
Passaconaway was a real man, a powerful leader who held sway over the Penacook people across what's now New Hampshire in the early sixteen hundreds, and lived, they say, to be past a hundred years old. But he was more than a chief. He was a powwow — a medicine man — and the reputation he carried was something out of a dream. The people told, and even the English settlers wrote down in wonder, that Passaconaway could make water burn and rocks move; that he could take a dry leaf in the dead of winter and make it turn green in his hand; that he could turn himself into a living flame and rise up in smoke. Whether he truly had such powers, or was simply the wisest and most cunning man in a thousand miles, I'll let you decide.
Here's the part that stays with me. Passaconaway, wise as he was, saw which way the wind was blowing before any other leader would admit it. He saw the English coming like a tide that could not be turned, and though it must have broken his heart, he counseled peace — told his people not to make war on the newcomers, because it could not be won. And at the end of his long life, the story goes, he called his people together for a great farewell feast, and he warned them, one last time: do not quarrel with the English, or you will be destroyed and wiped from the earth. Then the old man went away to die. And within a generation, his grandson Kancamagus — the man this road is named for — would watch that very prophecy come true. There's a village down the road that still carries the old sachem's name. When you pass it, think of the man who could burn water, and who could see the end of his own world coming, and could not stop it.