Editors Note:  This series of newspaper stories from the Addison Independent was awarded First Place in the NENPA (New England Newspaper and Press Awards) for best sports column of 2017 (in the non-weekly newspaper category). Read below for a short excerpt or follow the link to read the entire series.  The series was based on Matthew Dickerson’s June, 2017 stay in Glacier National Park as Artist-in-Residence.

Excerpt: “Like most visitors to Glacier National Park, I am awed by the majesty of the mountains: the splendor of towering peaks of bare stone, thrust upward by the collisions of continents, carved by glaciers, and still splotched with last winter’s snow. 

Written on Mead Chapel at Middlebury College are the words of an ancient Hebrew poet, translated into King James English: ‘The strength of the hills are his also.‘ As I’ve wandered about the park the past few days, I’ve been thinking about the strength of ‘hills.’ A more modern English translation reads, ‘The mountain peaks belong to him.’ I think also of a contemporary translation by an author who lives just an hour from the park, and can sit on his porch looking across Flathead Lake at these same peaks: ‘In the other hand (he) grasps the high mountains.’

The strength of the hills. The might of the high mountains. The power of peaks. They indeed inspire awe.”

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Matthew Dickerson had the privilege of serving for one month as the Artists-in-Residence at Glacier National Park in Montana.  Essays from that residency will appear in his forthcoming book The Voices of Rivers.

Dickerson also wrote a series of four short newspaper essays for the Addison Independent newspaper in Vermont.

The Addison Independent submitted the 2nd and 3rd of this series to the annual NENPA (New England Newspaper and Press Association) annual competition and it won 1st place for the best sports column of 2017.

That series of essays, along with a short feature on the author, can be found here: http://www.addisonindependent.com/201707outdoorsman-glacier-national-park.