Friday, December 05, 2003
Sewanee
Why have I never written about Sewanee? Sometimes I wonder if my thoughts on the Mountain are just a little too deeply held, a little too tender, a bit inscrutable—will other people understand? Can they understand?
That's one of those perfect descriptions that would be difficult to improve.
Sewanee was Arcadia for me. It had tricky moments, depressing winters, frigid fog, and was a very long way from home. But wonderful people live there—the kind of people who invite you to their homes for Sunday dinner and drive perfect strangers 90 miles to the airport. It is home to beautiful music and softly imposing buildings; in winter the trees in Manigault Park droop with ice and in the spring the cherry blossoms perfume everything.
I have too much to say about Sewanee and yet not enough. I feel inadequate to the task—a task others have no doubt done much better than me already.
For now it must be sufficient to write this: I am a greater person for having lived on the Mountain and loved its green slopes, rocky protrusions, decrepit dormitories and magnificent chapel.
"It's a long way away, even from Chattanooga, in the middle of woods, on top of a bastion of mountains crenelated with blue coves. It is so beautiful that people who have once been there always, one way or another, come back. For such as detect apple green in an evening sky, it is Arcadia—not the one that never used to be, but the one that many people always live in; only this one can be shared."
Lanterns on the Levee, Alexander Percy
That's one of those perfect descriptions that would be difficult to improve.
Sewanee was Arcadia for me. It had tricky moments, depressing winters, frigid fog, and was a very long way from home. But wonderful people live there—the kind of people who invite you to their homes for Sunday dinner and drive perfect strangers 90 miles to the airport. It is home to beautiful music and softly imposing buildings; in winter the trees in Manigault Park droop with ice and in the spring the cherry blossoms perfume everything.
I have too much to say about Sewanee and yet not enough. I feel inadequate to the task—a task others have no doubt done much better than me already.
For now it must be sufficient to write this: I am a greater person for having lived on the Mountain and loved its green slopes, rocky protrusions, decrepit dormitories and magnificent chapel.
