Beautiful Bethlehem PA

 A September walking tour of the campus of Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA, with the ablest of guides: Diane Husic, chair of Biological Sciences. She knows all the best trees. Like this grand champion English elm, biggest in the nation. That's me beneath in the red top, for scale. YOWSA.

It looked very healthy, though it had a weepy stanky ooky place in the trunk at about head level. By the time you're that big and old, you're bound to have those. Hope it isn't anything serious. What a tree! Diane was going to plant a rain garden in a low wet spot along the building just to the left of this giant tree the very next day. She was hoping student volunteers would show up. 

It was one of those September afternoons where the light could cut glass. Everything was sharp and clear in the fine autumn sun.

I think Diane likes working here. She takes her classes on tree safaris all over campus. I used to love doing those with botany professor Carroll Wood at Harvard. It opened up such a world to me!

There's a venerability about the buildings that just awes me. They're so beautiful. For some reason I could imagine wanting to be married here. 

Maybe it was the old organ we found.

I was itching to try the keys. Wonder what Vox Humana sounds like? Or you could have angel voices, too. Either would have been fine, but I was afraid to touch it. It was so old. But I should have. That's what it's for.

In this beautiful performance space, a man was playing piano just to play. How wonderful, to be in a place where people do that for its own sake, for the sake of art or practice or just filling the space with music. Bethlehem is soaked in history and music; there's a huge music festival there each summer, and they were gearing up for a festival of all things Irish when I was there. It made me long to be nearer such a cultural treasure trove. But that's OK. Out here in the sticks, we make our own culture, because we have to. And there's a beauty in that, too.

Even the chairs were spindly and venerable. I'd never seen chairs like that in a concert space. The seats, gently scooped for comfort. 

Diane ended our epic hike through Bethlehem with a (perfectly timed) stop at The (cleverly named) Chocolate Lab, where she bought me the best dang pecan/caramel/milk chocolate Turtle I have ever, ever had in my whole life. I am still gnawing on it now. I have one 3/4" square piece of it hidden behind the fruit bowl. For tomorrow. And then it is gone. Waaah. Wondering if they mail-order. Because I discovered that a little piece of chocolate caramel pecan turtle is the ideal reward for, say, finishing a column or doing an extra-long run or just having the munchies.

Down to the smallest detail, Bethlehem is a gem. 

Lest you think that I was there simply to gaze up at London planes and English elms and eat turtles, Diane had invited me to give a public talk at Moravian College. On Thursday night I gave "The Bluebird Effect" to a wonderful SRO crowd, a really interesting interdisciplinary cross-section of the community and the college. (I loove the sound of people doing the Extra Chair Shuffle). There were people from the Religion department, Biology, Humanities, and a nice sprinkling of local conservationists and naturalists.

 photo by Clint Doyle


photo by Clint Doyle

And on Friday morning I led a creative writing class for Joyce Hinnefeld on writing about animals (and people, too) without getting all anthropomorphic and gooey. I read a bunch of my NPR pieces that illustrated the points I wanted to make. It was superfun. Could have gone on for about a week. Overprepared, as usual.

photo by Thomas Kopetskie

photo by Thomas Kopetskie

That's Joyce to the right of me. She is awesome, a wonderful writer and teacher. Diane is smiling at something (funny piece I guess)  to the right of Joyce. Makes me smile. 

Then on Saturday evening I spoke at Lehigh Gap Nature Center, and that was wonderful too.  All in all it was a most excellent and satisfying Zicktrip. I am very grateful to Diane for arranging the whole thing, to Diane and David for hosting me, to Pennsylvania for being her lovely self at the perfect season for walks and photoexpotitions. More photos and surprises to come.

God's Acre

Diane's been reading my blog for years, and she knows what makes my canary chirp. Big trees, great architecture, old and venerable things...The grand destination of our Friday afternoon walk was an ancient (well, for America) burying ground on the campus of Moravian Academy that's known as God's Acre. Moravians (from the easternmost part of the Czech Republic) came to America in the mid 1700's thanks to religious persecution at home, and they set up a peaceful community in eastern Pennsylvania that honored everyone no matter the color of their skin. 

This is reflected in the headstones. None are bigger or more ostentatious than others, and all are flush with the earth.

I'm thinking the Little Strength is a ship. Gee. Not many of these good people are making it out of their 40's. It must have been incredibly rough.

 One year-old Thomas Otto Braun gets the same treatment 

as 12-year-old Benigna Antes. Smallpox. How awful. I marveled that her marble stone was as crisp and readable as if it had been carved yesterday, instead of 224 years earlier.

I kind of fall into headstones when I start reading them. I absolutely love the font used on Sarah Iselstein's stone. Wow, wow, wow. There's something so 2014 about it. It's absolutely alive, antic. Might have to steal that font for a project. I'd call it Saccona.

The cemetery makes for a beautiful parklike space, albeit a kind of trippy one (in more ways than one!)

The Moravians established more than 30 settlements around the world on the "Herrnhut model," which, according to Wiki,  "emphasized a lifestyle of prayer and worship and a form of communal living in which personal property was held but simplicity of lifestyle and generosity with wealth were considered important spiritual attributes. As a result, divisions between social groups and extremes of wealth and poverty were largely eliminated." Moravians believed in universal education, for men and women, for people of color too. 

This one arrested me. It's doubtful that a mixed-race person would have received a place in many cemeteries at this time, in any other spot but here in this Moravian community. I bet she was beautiful, at 15.

Each stone I study starts a train of reflection, a set of mind perfectly in tune with walking, hands behind back, reading stone after stone, wondering about each one. I surface with difficulty from my reverie and am surprised to see people driving cars and walking about, noses down, poking away at their phone screens. I blink at them like a traveler from another time, set down in 2014.