The mountain was not a peak like its neighbors but a ridge. Its long spine was clear against the sky appearing from below like a giant sleeping cat, its haunches high, back sloping downward only to rise again slightly at the neck.  Like a cat too it was furred, covered with the thick dark foliage of an uncut evergreen forest.

There was power in the mountain's attitude.  It had been there a long time.  It had been there before the Indians  - the Mohicans.  They called it “Manicknung”, meaning the "place where the Mountain heaps up".  

And then the pioneers came with their axes and hewed out their place on the mountain's side and have clung there now for some two centuries.  Being white men they called it for one of their own - Stratton.

See: "History of Stratton, Vermont" by DK Young