The only monolith reported in Vermont so far disappeared last week, only to return less than 24 hours later on a small mountaintop in Pittsfield.
Similar sculptures have appeared around the world, only to vanish shortly after. Peter Borden, the general manager at Riverside Farm, where the sculpture is located, is happy to see the piece has returned.
“We’re very, very pleased someone brought it back,” he said.
The monolith is likely the same one that appeared several weeks ago. After Borden received an email on Wednesday from a hiker who reported that it had gone missing, Borden climbed the trail in the dark and found only the structure’s base, sand and footprints.
Then, over the weekend, he heard that someone had returned it, likely on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.
The monolith is oriented differently now, with the seams of the three-sided structure now facing the most prominent part of the trail.
Last week, scratches appeared on the side of the monolith most visible to hikers. At the time, Borden guessed that someone intentionally vandalized the piece, but then a photo posted to Instagram showed what really happened: local snowboarders, using a bungee catapult, performed tricks using the monolith as a prop. The metal edges of their boards scratched the metal surface of the sculpture.
Tucker Zink, the rider featured in the shot and the general manager at Darkside Snowboards, a gear shop in Killington, lives on the road where the trailhead is located. He didn’t mean to damage the piece, he said, but couldn’t pass up an opportunity to use the monolith to perform tricks.
“Snowboard culture in general has always been kind of a rebellious thing, and there’s a huge community that seeks out features in the streets,” he said. “As soon as we saw metal, we were like, we’re probably going to be the only ones to do this.”
Zink said he wasn’t the one to rotate the monolith, but he wasn’t surprised that someone apparently tried to fix it.
“I had a feeling that it disappeared because they wanted to resurface it, because the picture with all the scratches in it is not so good,” he said.
Borden said the monolith is wobbly in its new position, so he hopes to secure it more firmly. He hadn’t heard about the snowboarders on Monday morning, but was happy to learn that the monolith hadn’t been intentionally vandalized.
“I’m glad they’re outside recreating,” he said. “It’s too bad it got scratched up, but things happen.”
And he hopes visitors keep coming, now that the structure is back.
“The best thing that could possibly happen is that people are outside enjoying the hill, the nature, and everything associated with it,” he said. “That’s a home run.”
