We work incredibly hard to create remnants of the past that will help us imagine what it was like: think of ghost towns and historic monuments. National and state park systems have developed strict guidelines for how to repair “historic” structures, e.g., what materials can be used for public-facing projects (stuff visitors might see) need to be or seem to be authentic to the period (whereas non-public-facing projects can use modern materials). Valley Forge is filled with such structures — fences, cabins, embankments — maintained to give visitors a sense of history.
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That stormy March afternoon, the quiet, lonely cabin certainly didn’t help me imagine the history of the place — 244 years earlier I suspect it was a relatively loud and lively camp with perhaps as many as 1,500 cabins and more than 10,000 soldiers scattered around the Valley Forge encampment. This cabin doesn’t help me understand what life was like for the Continental Army, but standing there in the blowing snow and listening to the ice cracking on the tree limbs as they flexed and bent in the wind I was able to conjure up an image, a fiction of what it might be like to live in such a place.
COVID continues to disrupt lives and shape our experiences. I wonder how this student and his friends would be playing in the snow if times were different.
It was a particularly cold January evening as a student, carrying his dinner, wandered back to eat alone in his dorm room. The snow only added to the cold.
Benches are so much more than merely a place to sit. Arranged around campus they seem like sentinels watching over a particular vista or guarding a quiet corner. Should you happen across one, it invites you to pause and maybe even to linger. Alone or with a friend, passionate conversation or silent observation, it matters little. Benches don’t care.
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Their insistence on reflection and contemplation put them at odds with a world that celebrates busyness. Now, more than ever, we should perhaps take them up on their offer to loiter and to dawdle. We would all benefit by spending some time doing nothing. We don’t need some app on our ever-present “smart phone” to tell us when and for how long to focus. We need not regularize and formalize downtime. Just go find a bench. There are plenty out there waiting for you.
Following the lead of others requires little effort and less courage. “Innovate and iterate” while a route to financial success and often a means of improving our efficiencies rarely produces genuinely new and imaginative things. To strike out on your own requires conviction and courage. To pursue your own goals wherever they might lead demands trust in yourself. Better to get lost having set out alone into parts unknown, than simply to tread an established path to some recognizable destination. So too in things creative.
Winter has happened this year, or at least February has already been properly cold and snow-filled. We’ve had some wonderful days of blowing, bitter snow storms. A thick layer of snow covers the ice on the local pond. The storms keep people inside, and so naturally I’m compelled to be out, wandering the streets and parks and open spaces. Even through the haze of snow and the monochrome winter afternoons, the promise of spring lurks in the tree branches tinged with yellow. Soon they will explode in the fresh growth of a new year. But not yet. Today winter still rules.
You had been wandering the streets for a few hours looking for some scene, some storefront, courtyard, or back alley. Now and then you sought shelter from the drizzle, ducking into a café or standing in a doorway. The dreary sky and glistening cobblestones suited the city, which somehow seems to glow with its own internal light. Although you started in the center amongst the cacophony of shoppers and strollers, you prefer the surrounding districts with their distinct personalities. Your path wound further and further out into the less trafficked neighborhoods. Then, when the snow started to fall, you left the streets behind and wandered into ….
Alone in a garden with snow-covered fountains.
A heavy snow had been falling for a couple hours by the time I passed through the gates. It was a lovely evening, I thought, to linger in the imperial gardens. As I wound my way deeper into the gardens I passed the occasional visitor walking back along the pathways toward the exit and the city beyond the walls. We exchanged nods or fleeting pleasantries about the weather. At some point I realized that I had stopped seeing other people. Even their footprints were disappearing gathering darkness. Wandering amongst the trees and past the empty fountains, their sculptures blanketed in snow, I felt as if I had the place to myself.
Soon even their footprints would disappear.
Oh shit, I thought, I do have the place to myself. I haven’t seen anybody for at least 30 minutes. It is unmistakably dark now. And although it is not cold, a heavy, wet snow continues to fall from the leaden sky. It’s 7:00 now. What time do they lock the gates? I had only glanced at the sign as I entered, but I seem to recall 5:30. Surely that was just a suggestion, or when they stopped letting people into the gardens.
Fifteen minutes later, standing in front of the really tall, really locked gates, I am rethinking my decision not to pay attention to the time. There is no one-way turnstile to let people out, as I had vaguely hoped there might be. There is no guard in the guardhouse to save absent-minded visitors from themselves. No. There is just a formidable gate, topped with spikes that are clearly more than just aesthetic embellishments. I have a perverse appreciation for the symmetry of these gates. Originally designed to project an image of strength and authority outwards to the masses, and to keep those people out, these gates and the walls surrounding the gardens work equally well to trap people inside. Just to be sure, I push on the gates. They neither move nor even make a sound. Standing there in the dark silence of the garden, I can hear cars accelerate from the intersection just 50 yards and a 10-foot wall from me.
Worth every minute of effort.
After checking various other gates to confirm that they too are locked for the night, I begin looking for the section of wall I can most easily scale, importantly a section without the big, sharp spikes along the top. And I’m wondering what the penalty will be should I get caught. Surely I can talk my way out of a night in jail, but given the local preference for fines, I suspect it will cost me.
Speaking of fines, isn’t there a police station by one of the entrances? Not, of course, the one close to me. In fact, given the direction I wandered the perimeter, that entrance is rather far from me. Did I mention the snow, which an hour ago was lovely but is now considerably less so? As I trudge back through the snow, I think: I might be spending the night under the stairs behind the palace. At least that’ll be a story.
Oh good, there’s the station. And I see somebody inside.
