Carleton and Frontenac: "He Never Saw the Fireflies"

Frontenac State Park, one of the most beautiful and varied in the state, isn't often crowded on a Monday night. We booked our favorite site (#37) and headed south on a Monday morning just after rush hour. But the weather looked iffy, to say the least, and in order not to get to the park too early in the day, and add an element of novelty to the excursion, we headed south on I-35 and made an extended detour through Northfield.

It seems we're always passing through Northfield on our way somewhere else. This time, we made it a point to drive up the hill on the north side of town to explore the campus of Carleton College. I'd printed out a map of the arboretum, and after parking in a lot just off Highway 19, we wandered through the woods behind the recreation center looking for "Jo-Ryo-En," the Japanese Garden.

We finally found it, nestled behind a different recreation center much closer to the main campus. It's attractive, but so small they discourage walking around in it. You're supposed to sit in the little hut and contemplate it in silence.

The giant yellow leaf-blower sitting on the bench  in the hut detracted somewhat from the contemplative mood, and notions of silent reverie were further undercut by the two workmen who appeared out of the woods and wandered across the pebble "lake" with a big tarp, which they draped unceremoniously over one of the spreading ground-level evergreens.

"I don't think you're supposed to go in there," I said to one of the men.

He nodded noncommittally.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"We're going to prune the dead wood off of those pines," he said.

"That must be satisfying work," I said.

"After a slight pause, he replied. "Well, it's work."  

I was serious, of course. With a careful eye, you can improve on nature in subtle, undetectable ways, by simply following the inner logic of the growth, while cutting out the dead stuff. It's like editing a book, I guess.

We returned to our car,  walking down the hill past a lake, and drove into town and up the other side of the hill to the main campus, where we eventually located the Gould Library. (In fact, the Japanese garden and the library are both on the "main" campus. We could have walked there in less time than it took us to drive. But only a few buildings were marked on my arboretum map. And in any case, the point was to "get to know" the campus. Right?

In the library I glanced desultorily at a small collection of Chinese figurines in the rare books room and, with greater enthusiasm, examined a temporary exhibit of exotic photographs taking by Carleton students in India, Tasmania, and other locales during their studies abroad. Most interesting of all, to my mind, was a single display case containing illustrated books from the middle ages that was put together in association with a recent alumni lecture : "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream: The Crusades, Apocalyptic Prophecy, and the End of History."

The oldest of these books dates to the ninth century, and they looked old indeed. I had trouble wrapping my head around the notion that they were authentic.  (They aren't.) I saw a reference to the Morgan Library on one of the labels but was having trouble reading it—I'd forgotten my reading glasses in the car.

Several of the images depict events described in the Book of Revelations. Hilary read a few lines to me from one of the texts. It referred to a seven-headed dragon whose tail wiped a third of the stars out of the sky, and I thought immediately of the constellation Eridanus, a sprawling dragon in a region of the night sky otherwise largely blank to the naked eye. (The trouble with this theory is that Eridanus was considered in ancient times to be a river, not a dragon.)

Maybe I should read Revelation, I mused. I've never given it much thought, deeming it violent, crazy, and generally incoherent, entirely by hearsay. Maybe it's poetic, once you strip away a millennium or two of exegesis?

A Kentucky coffee tree

On our way back to the car, we enjoyed the scent of the basswood trees blooming on the Bald Spot and also stopped briefly to admire the foliage on a Kentucky coffee tree. (Nature can be strange, too.) During our lunch at a hot hoagie place on main street, I got to thinking about how pleasant a college town can be, with free lectures and concerts, youth and conversation, dreams and possibility in the air. (And much easier to enjoy if you don't have to go to class!)

Back on the road, we continued on our way across the state on Highway 19 past Cannon Falls, Vasa, and Red Wing, finally arriving at the park about three.

It didn't take us long to notice that campsite 37, which is airy and open in mid-May, has become dark and dank by early July. After a bit of hemming and hawing, we changed to #53. You're always taking a risk when you switch, but it turned out to be a good move. We enjoyed sitting under the tarp in the drizzle, looking out across the fields, eating potato chips, and saying to each other every now and again: "I think the rain is letting up. A little. The sky looks lighter over in that direction."

Crawling out of the tent in the middle of the night to answer the call of nature, Hilary was dazzled by the fireflies glowing everywhere in the forest. I got out the other side of the tent wearing a headlamp and didn't see a single one.