The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 14

We at Darrow School in the 1960s were no more or less rebellious than teenagers anywhere. But because we could not race around in cars or get into trouble with girls, our rebelliousness was highly focused: It was all about hair. Our goal was to grow it as long as we could. The goal of our parents at home and our masters at school was to cut it.

A barber visited campus once a week. We were often ordered to get haircuts, and not doing so meant accumulating penalty hours - our leisure time reassigned to hard labor. Some boys were willing to toil in order to dodge the clippers, but it was difficult to avoid the wrath of the establishment for long. Our headmaster was so frustrated by our refusal to obey orders that he once grabbed an underclassman named Jones, dragged him into the basement of Wickersham and barbered the boy himself. This photo, taken through the basement window by a student on a dare, ended up in the yearbook.

We were not the first rebels on the mountain, nor the last. Long hair now seems so harmless, especially in comparison to the contrariness of a few years earlier that resulted in the burning of buildings and nearly the end of the school. And even some of the Shakers were dissidents. The tradition in the Shaker community was to allow males, when they reached the age of 21, to decide to stay with the community or leave for life in the world. Many of them, brought to the community as children, chose to leave, and because Shakers were celibate, the loss of these men would prove fatal to the movement. Women, apparently, had no such choice.

Young Shakers were probably no different than any young people: apt to defy their elders and surrender to their instincts. True or not, a legend persisted on the mountainside of a skeleton of an infant, wrapped in cloth, discovered hidden in a stone wall.

That legend haunted me. It was as if the anguish and the pain of that young mother had not left that place and still lingered there 100 years later. In fact, everything around me seemed to be inhabited by spirits of the past. The shaft of the shovel I used to dig ditches was smooth from the rub of hundreds of hands of students before me. The iron door latches were grooved by the countless lift of fingers. Dresser knobs forever darkened by the oil and grime of hands, door jambs dented by so many trunks and suitcases moving in and out.

In my dreams, I am transported back to the mountainside. I find myself standing on the fire escape of Ann Lee Cottage and listening to this chorus of crickets, or meandering through the creaking halls of Wickersham. I wonder if students there today might sense the wandering spirit of my dreams. I wonder if, long after I am dead, part of me will remain there, in scrapes on the floor from my chair, in notes tucked into a library book, or in a birch tree grown bent from my swinging.

THE END

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 13

When you take about 175 boys and isolate them in the Berkshire Mountains, away from television and radio and, most importantly, girls, something is going to happen. Teenage boys have a lot of energy, and when that is stifled for a long time, it builds up, finds a weak spot and explodes through it. That's how pranks happen.

In the minds of some of the seniors in the spring of 1965, that weak spot was an old panel truck used by Darrow's maintenance department. The truck, its dark blue paint faded from years of exposure to the elements, was regularly seen coughing its way up the dirt road, its gears grinding, in daily rounds to pick up trash from the dormitories. It was manned by two friendly, slow-moving and slow-witted custodians that went by the nicknames of Augie and Mon Petite, the French term of endearment that means "my little one." But Mon Petite was anything but little. He was, in fact, huge, with a rear-end the size of a steamer trunk.

One Saturday morning, arriving for breakfast at the Dairy Barn, which was what we called the multi-purpose building that housed the gym, auditorium and dining hall, we were shocked to find the old blue truck parked in the lobby of the building, painted all over in yellow polka dots, looking like some sort of enormous, dead beetle.

How had it gotten there? The doors to the Dairy Barn were just wide enough to get it in, but how had it gotten up the flight of concrete steps? Presumably, a large number of senior boys had either carried or pushed the truck up all those steps in the middle of the night, doing it quietly enough not to wake anyone.

The entire student body was buzzing with excitement over the prank and wondering what might happen to the culprits if they were identified. The faculty did their best to appear disgusted, offended, disappointed over the outrageous offense, but they could not quite conceal their true emotions. Even with jaws tightly clenched, smiles twitched at the corners of our masters' mouths. Many of them must have thought the prank was simply brilliant.

Our headmaster delivered the obligatory lecture, but his rage lacked sincerity. No one was punished, but the seniors were ordered to restore the truck to its rightful parking spot.

The polka dots, however, were allowed to remain.

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 12

Darrow seemed like the same place to us year after year, but the school was - and is - in a constant state of change. Students and faculty come and go, and each of them leaves an impression.

When I was a senior, many of us were thinking how wonderful it would be to try LSD. Darrow boys five years before us had no conception of mind-altering drugs; they were different form us. And the boys (and girls) who came five years after us were probably popping acid tabs for real; they were different, too.

Ned Groth, who graduated from Darrow five years before me, offered some comments on "The Spirits of Lebanon." Following are a few excerpts from his e-mail that add some historical perspective to our story:

"Harry Mahnken not only was the head football coach at Princeton for a few years, he was the original coach of 150-pound football there and coached it for a dozen years or so. He helped establish the league Princeton still plays in (although they call it "sprint" football nowadays.) There's a trophy for the outstanding player at PU, the Harry A. Mahnken trophy...

"Darrow had Princeton hand-me-down football uniforms in your era because of the arson fires of 1963. Before that, Darrow had its own very nice red uniforms (check out some older yearbooks). The gym was one of the buildings torched, and all the sports equipment therein went up in smoke. In the wake of the fires, as Operation Phoenix went into action and the school fought back from the devastating loss of the (original) Dining Hall and Dairy Barn, they took whatever help they could get. Harry called on some old connections and got perfectly good year-old uniforms, if you didn't mind black and orange...

"When I was there, the Medicine Shop was unused as a school building; it was full of all kinds of Shaker "stuff," including a number of large machines (laundry equipment I think), dozens of seed boxes, thousands of bottles of various sizes, etc. If I had only had the sense to know what to steal, it was there for the taking. All that stuff was auctioned off in 1960, when the building was starting to be renovated for use as a dorm (it opened in the fall of 1961, I think.) Richard Bethards, a beloved English teacher and frustrated actor, was the auctioneer… I think it fetched all of about $50,000 at the time. Most of it went to local museums, like the Shaker Museum in Chatham."

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 11

In one respect, Darrow was no different than any other boarding school, or military barracks, or prison. In these places, students, soldiers or inmates engage in typical group dynamics: They establish a pecking order, recognize leaders and select victims. To avoid persecution, you had to follow the accepted norms of behavior and fashion, and it helped greatly if you were not ugly, uncoordinated, effeminate, unstable, uncool, physically disabled, or in any other way different.

Some of the nicknames boys acquired were playful, like "Ma" and "Yoyo." Other were considerably more mean-spirited: "No-Chin" and "Dogface." Worse still were the ugly slurs: "Kike," "Fag," "Queer," and "Gimp."

Boys might prey on victims for the most minor of offenses. I recall one student teased and ridiculed because his madras sport jacket was not 100 percent cotton and from Brooks Brothers but rather some cheap blended fabric from Robert Hall.

For some of us - those lucky enough to be considered cool, or at least not uncool, or perhaps just invisible - life on the mountainside was tolerable and sometimes better. For the persecuted, those were years of fear and agony, creeping from one hiding place, such as a library cubicle, to the safety of their dorm rooms.

It is only years later that the regret and shame of it all begins to seep into your consciousness. You feel awful for being part of the pack that pounced on one of these kids, or, at least, for not coming to the defense of the persecuted.

I returned for a reunion 25 years after graduation and was surprised to see that one of these victimized classmates had also shown up. Why, I wondered, would he want to resurrect such awful memories? Why would he risk ridicule again?

Perhaps going through what he did in those years at Darrow made him stronger and hardened him for life at college, and for that he was grateful.

Of course, none of us teased or ignored him at the reunion. We had grown up. We treated him as we treated our old and good friends. We pretended as if the torture never happened. But sadly, none of us had the guts to tell him, "I'm sorry."

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 10

In a basket on our breakfast table is a book of graces my family has used for many years. One of those graces contains this sentiment: "Grant unto us a due sense of appreciation, for those whose hearts and hands have wrought for us." This was written by a Charles D. Brodhead.

I have no way of knowing for sure that this prayer was penned by the Charles D. Brodhead who was assistant headmaster at Darrow School in the 1960s, but the words "hearts and hands" sound awfully Shaker, and our Wednesday "Hands to Work" had no more enthusiastic proponent than Mr. Brodhead.

He seemed ancient to us then, but I am now as old as he was then, and I don't feel ancient at all. Charles Brodhead was a brilliant man, educated at Princeton and Oxford, and a teacher all his life. He was also a bit eccentric. We'd see him marching through the woods and up and down the lane, carrying a walking stick and wearing a tam-o'-shanter, and we'd snicker. "Crazy Charlie" is what we'd call him.

Even though, in our view, he was at Death's door at age 60, he was a strong and healthy man. He coached the wrestling team. He kept his big feet in hiking boots, and his big, gnarled hands were often mahogany brown with the stain of black walnuts. But it was his wild, piercing eyes that made him look a little teched.
We were in the early years of the age of individuality, of nonconformity, when people were urged to "do their own thing," yet we students were intolerant of deviation from our established standards of fashion and behavior and subjected people who were different to ridicule, and worse.

I have written here of the quaint and comical aspects of my Darrow experience; they are pleasant to remember. But there was a darker side to life on the mountain. Darrow could be a cruel place, and torturous for those who did not fit in.

The Spirits of Lebanon

As far as prep schools went, Darrow was neither large nor well endowed. Often it seemed to us that we were small and poor, especially when it came to athletics. Take football, for example.

Team sports were not an option at Darrow. We couldn't field teams unless participation was mandatory. And once you had chosen your sport (in fall it was either football or soccer), you were stuck with it, and I was stuck with football.

Our equipment was substandard; the junior varsity team was still using leather helmets. And just as embarrassing were our uniforms. Although our school colors were maroon and white, our uniforms were black and orange - hand-me-downs from Princeton University.

Our coach, Harry Mahnken, had been head football coach at Princeton from 1943 until 1945, when he came to Darrow to coach football, baseball and basketball. When the Princeton team had worn out its uniforms and had gotten new ones, the Tigers' equipment manager sent the old ones to his old friend Harry.

Coach Mahnken had the visage of a man who had played football too long in a helmet without a face guard. He was a big, gruff man who revered toughness and despised foolishness. Our daily afternoon practices were hellish. Every day, he required us to conduct a brutal one-on-one drill: One player was required to stand still while the other sprinted toward him and tackled him. I seemed always to be paired with a classmate named Mike who resembled the Incredible Hulk, but with shoulder pads and without the green skin. Mike was enthusiastic about football. After sailing with me airborne for eight feet, I'd land on my back with his enormous shoulder grinding the wind out of my chest. On my hands and knees, trying to recover, I could hear Coach yelling at me, "C'mon! Get up and hit him back!"

The coach had a couple of favorite plays that bordered on foolishness. At least twice a game we'd run the double-reverse. The quarterback would take the long hike, hand off to a halfback running right, who would hand off to the other halfback running left, who would hand off to the receiver running right. The play was only successful if our linemen were able to stop the rush by knocking down the opponents and lying on top of them long enough for the play to be executed.
His other favorite play was a trick. The end would not join the huddle but rather trot to the sideline and pretend to be talking with the coach, although still standing on the field of play. Our team would break from the huddle and line up for a quick count. The quarterback would then find his receiver sprinting away from our coach uncovered.

My senior year on the varsity team was cut short by a bout with mononucleosis. I was never so happy to be fighting disease. I was the happiest boy in the infirmary, waking from long naps to listen to the whistles and grunts of football practice drifting through the window, hearing the HHRRRUNCH! of another victim having the wind knocked out of him by the Incredible Mike.

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 8

The Shakers built the houses in which we lived. They'd made the pegs on which we hung our clothes and cleared the fields on which we played. The inhabitants of the New Lebanon Society had died off long ago, but we lived with their spirits, surrounded by their architecture and ingenuity.

I lived in Ann Lee Cottage, named for Mother Ann, who, the Shakers believed, represented the second coming of Christ. Although it had been retrofitted with a boiler and radiators, wired and plumbed to add sinks, showers and toilets, it was otherwise as it was constructed in the mid 1800s. The double-hung windows (a Shaker invention) were original. Mine faced the west, and in winter, when the wind blew up from the valley, fine little piles of snow accumulated inside on the sill, and the coffee in my cup placed there the night before would be frozen solid by morning.

Handsome and utilitarian, Ann Lee Cottage was nevertheless a firetrap. Our housemaster made it quite clear what he thought about smoking, which was forbidden for all students on campus.
"I know you smoke," he would tell us, "and nothing I tell you will prevent you from doing it. But if you have to smoke, go out into the woods to do it. Because if I ever catch you smoking in this house, and putting the lives of every boy and me and my wife and children in danger, I will make sure that you are gone from this school immediately and forever."
We didn't smoke in Ann Lee Cottage.

Once, I could not contain my curiosity any longer about a third-floor closet, the door of which was painted shut. It was a long, low closet under the eaves. One Saturday afternoon, when everyone else was watching a soccer game, I worked at it with a table knife and got the door open. It was packed full of old chairs. I don't know what I expected to find, but I was disappointed.
Of course, those old Shaker chairs would now be worth a fortune. We had no idea at the time that the old furniture we abused would someday be commanding huge sums on the auction block at Sotheby's.
Many years later, when enrollment had plummeted and the school was in poor financial shape, much of that Shaker furniture was sold. I don't think that Sister Emma Neale would have objected, though. I think she would have felt that it was not the object that is sacred, but rather the work that made it.

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 7

It was possible to escape from Darrow, legally, for a weekend, if your grades and behavior were good enough. My roommate Dean invited me to his home in the fall of our senior year. But we ignored the rules and restrictions about leaving the campus, and our antics nearly had us expelled.

I couldn't remember the details of this incident, so I e-mailed Dean and asked him for his recollection.
"We were seen by the music teacher, hitchhiking (which was strictly forbidden) on Route 20 on our way to Albany and eventually my home, at that time, in Niskayuna. We had forged leave slips saying that we were going to be picked up and returned by my mother - forged in the sense that my mother didn't pick us up.
"When we returned with my mother, the headmaster questioned us (me, you, and my mother). We lied. You caved under the severe and acute stress. We were sentenced to not being allowed to leave campus for a month or so."

Dean went on to explain that we would most likely have been expelled if the headmaster had not received word that Edward McIlvain Jr., a recent Darrow graduate, had been killed in action in Vietnam on Oct, 18, 1966.
"It seems to me we also had to put our hands to work and our hearts to God for a length of time," Dean wrote.

Yes, I do remember now working off all those penalty hours on weekends, digging a drainage ditch until we could no longer turn the frozen earth.
And now I can recall my grilling by the headmaster. He had a stern, sharply chiseled face, as if sculpted from a pine log with a tomahawk. The anger came is a rosy blush to his cheeks and forehead. I could not have known at the time that I was not the major target of that anger, or of his grief.

Looking back, I see now why we weren't kicked out of school. We had violated his trust and had been dishonest, but our headmaster could not stomach losing another two boys. Not after losing one for good.

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 6

Darrow made it perfectly clear that it had no connection with the Shaker Society and that the school favored no particular religion. But the Shaker idea of finding God within oneself was a good fit for a non-denominational school, and the administrators made sure we had plenty of time to do that searching.

We were required to attend chapel every evening but Saturday and on Sunday morning as well. Life at Darrow was regimental, our schedules designed to obliterate idleness. We attended classes on Saturday, too, but not on Wednesday - that was our time for "Hands to Work."

The student body was divided into work crews that spent Wednesdays doing maintenance, landscaping, repairs, farm chores and labor for Darrow Enterprises, which included the sale of apple cider, black walnut candy and wool. The designation came from the Shaker motto, "Hands to work, hearts to God." The Shakers believed that physical labor was an act of devotion, and an object made well or a job well done was in itself a prayer to the Almighty.

I have written occasionally over the past three years in this blog about Darrow, and some of you might recall my descriptions of my Hands to Work duties, which included picking apples and making cider, and working in the sheep pasture, mending fences and assisting the old ram to perform his mating duties.
Our Wednesday chores took us over the fields and into the woods to cut brush and clear fallen timber, and we often encountered evidence there of the old Shakers and their vigorous work ethic. I am still in awe of the walls they built, of rock chiseled and tightly fit to last through centuries, and wide and flat enough to accommodate horse-drawn hay wagons. We wondered where the huge, flat stones that made the surface of this "road" had come from. And how had they gotten there? It seemed as mysterious to us as the construction of the pyramids.

We resented the hard work we were made to do in those days, but inevitably some of the Shaker work ethic rubbed off on us and stayed with us.

Darrow has changed over the years. A few new buildings dot the campus. The student body is about 30 percent smaller, and half the students are girls now. Latin is no longer taught and there's no need for those three pay telephones in the basement of Wickersham anymore. But Wednesdays are still reserved for Hands to Work.

Sister Emma Neale would be proud.

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 5

Sister Emma Neale came to the Shaker village at New Lebanon with her mother and sister in 1853. She spent the rest of her life on the mountainside, witnessing the sect's growth, its heyday and its decline. A teacher, a weaver and maker of cloaks, a trustee of the Society of Shakers, she and her younger sister, Sarah, operated the Darrow farm into their nineties.

In 1929, when the community's numbers had dwindled, her concern turned toward the village itself. She persuaded her friend and neighbor, attorney Charles Haight, to start a school for boys that would best use the facilities of the village and preserve something of the Shaker tradition.

Sister Emma died in 1943 at the age of 97, her sister living on a few years longer.
"Shaker" was an almost derogatory nickname for the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming. In theology, the sect was similar to the Quakers, but because they believed that God would be found within the person, they were often self-absorbed during religious services and prone to dancing, mumbling and shaking. It was this behavior, and their adherence to celibacy, that often subjected them to ridicule from the outside world.

But Shaker philosophy encompassed far more than devotional practices. The following two paragraphs sum up that philosophy well. They are taken from "The Story of Darrow School," a handbook given to me in 1964 at my enrollment:
'This New Lebanon Society was not only the oldest, but the strongest, most important, and largest, of the societies. It was the model which others followed and once had 600 people, 100 buildings, and 6,000 acres of land. Almost entirely self-sustaining, the Shakers grew their food, flax, and herbs; they built their buildings, made their clothes, drugs, equipment, furniture, stoves, and tools; they provided their own dyes, lumber, waterpower, instruction, and entertainment. Shaker chairs, cloaks, and seeds were well known, for they were sold to the general public.
"As one saintly Shaker sister expressed it, 'the Shakers were thoroughly grounded in goodness.' They were celibate, they did not vote, refused to bear arms. They were a simple people – clean, prudent, temperate and resourceful. They believed in purity of mind and body, honesty and integrity in words and dealings, humanity and kindness to friend and foe, the education of children, the common ownership of property, diligence in business, manual labor, suitable employment for all, freedom from debt. They believed, too, in suitable provision being made for their people in health, sickness, and in old age."

Sister Emma had hoped these beliefs would survive as traditions at the school. What would she have thought of the Darrow School of the 1960s? What would she think of it today?

Actually, she might not be so shocked.

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 4

Without television or radio, our access to the outside world was limited to the U.S. mail, the copy of the daily newspaper available in the library and the three pay telephones in the basement of Wickersham Hall. We relied on our masters - that's what we called the teachers, who also lived at the school and who had televisions in their living quarters - to inform us. But we did have opportunities to escape this shelter.

Traveling to other boys' schools for games or to girls' schools for dances wasn't really getting out in the world, however. We were just moving from one shelter to another. Still, the dances were exciting and an opportunity for mischief.

I can recall a winter night in Albany, slow-dancing to Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence," in the darkened rec hall at St. Agnes Academy for Girls, our chaperons patrolling like prison guards, we were damp with sweat and desire, breathing through perfumed hair, thigh to thigh we danced, and then later a bunch of us sneaking out the door to huddle in the cold dark to share a forbidden cigarette.

There were times, when traveling to and from school from home, when we were loose in the world. They took a busload of us from school to the Albany train station just before Thanksgiving in 1965. We were all dressed for travel in coats and sport jackets and London Fog trench coats, most of us headed for New York City, and from there to home. I went straight to a kiosk in the station and bought a pack of cigarettes. Soon I'd be on the train, in the bar car and trying out my new fake ID and being served gin and tonics. I was feeling grown-up, but I was only 16 and uncommonly naïve. I'd always been that way - the last kid on the block to believe in Santa Claus, the last kid to realize how babies were made. I was so trusting of adults and sure they would never lie to kids or engage in filthy physical activity.

While sitting and smoking in the waiting area, a man about twice my age approached me. "I'm in a bit of a fix," he said. "I need some help. Are you interested in earning $20?"
"Sure!" I blurted out. "But I've got to catch a train in an hour. What sort of work do you have?"
"It won’t take long, it's just around the corner," he said.
I followed him out to the street. The sky was overcast, the same grimy gray as the streets and the dust-caked windows of buildings covered in a patina of charcoal factory soot. Albany never seemed to have recovered from winter. We walked two blocks.
"Where is this work you have?" I asked.
"My place is just around the corner," he answered.
And then I realized what was happening. I felt nauseous and fearful. "I gotta go," I said, turning and running back toward the station.
"Hey! Where are you going! It's just around the corner!" the man yelled after me, but I kept running and didn't stop until I'd found a group of my friends with which to surround myself, in case he'd followed me back.

This clutch of three or four classmates was my shelter. Darrow may have seemed like a prison to us then, but it, and the boys that made it, was our refuge. I can understand that now.

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 3

"Tannery Pond Concerts presents a season of six to seven chamber concerts between May and October in the Tannery on the grounds of the Darrow School in New Lebanon, NY.
"The Tannery, built by the Shakers in 1834, is a plain barn-like structure of warmly resonant wood unusually favorable to the sounds of chamber music, whether string ensemble, voice, piano, or small orchestra. Its size (it seats 290) fosters an intimate and interactive relationship between performers and artists, providing an unusual and exciting opportunity for closeness with the renowned artists that have appeared at Tannery Pond since its inception in 1991."

I stumbled upon the Tannery Pond Concerts Web site by accident. It got me to thinking. I guess musicians from all over the world are performing in the old tannery now. It was formally known on campus at the Laflin Whitehead Chapel, and we knew it well. It was where the entire school assembled every night but Saturday for vespers, a contemplative service before supper, and for church on Sunday.

I like to imagine that some of the richness of the acoustics of that building is due to the history of sound produced within it. I like to think that its oak and chestnut beams and woodwork have absorbed a couple of centuries of sound that are teased out by the vibrations from oboe and viola.

What sounds? How about the low rumble of 175 boys entering at the north door, descending the steps to the cellar, kicking off their muddy rubber boots, then ascending the steps at the south end and marching into the chapel. Or picture the suppressed laughter of a row of boys reacting to an inadvertent fart. The droning voices of a student body singing Shaker hymns under duress. The squawking of ducks copulating on Tannery Pond. The creaking of cherry benches. The chirping and fluttering of birds in the rafters. The low buzz of a June bug, tapping against dusty balcony windows. The groaning of timbers leaned on by wind. The sharp, scolding lecture of a headmaster railing against ungentlemanly conduct.

Have these sounds escaped into space, or are they trapped in the old barn forever?
I have gone back to that place. The last time, 11 years ago, my roommate Dean and I sat alone there for awhile, in the afternoon, the chapel on fire with the light of the descending sun, not saying anything. Just listening. Just listening to the spirits.

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 2

Our school was isolated from the rest of the world. The buildings lined a dirt road that came up from the village of New Lebanon, wound up through the woods and across the state line, where it met up with Route 20, the main road for traffic to Pittsfield, Mass. Almost no one used this old Shaker road, and the upper part was rocky and deeply rutted. But every so often, a carload of teenagers would pass through the campus, yelling insults and obscenities and hurling empty beer cans from their windows.

One afternoon, a carload of boys came roaring down the road in a cloud of dust and slowed as it passed a group of boys coming back from the gym. "Darrow fairies!" someone yelled. The group quickly surmised that they were Pittsfield boys headed down to the village in New York state to buy beer. (The drinking age was 18 in New York then, and 21 in Massachusetts.) Word spread quickly that the car might be coming back through campus. When it did, 60 or 70 "Darrow fairies" streamed out of their dormitories, screaming at the top of their lungs and waving baseball bats and lacrosse sticks. I was up the road in front of my dorm, Ann Lee Cottage, and watched the road fill with students and saw the car come to a sliding stop, then move rapidly in reverse, fishtailing back toward the valley in a shower of stones.

Another time, on a warm, spring Sunday afternoon, a convertible came down the road, a young woman standing on the back seat with nothing on from the waist up. I was elsewhere when this happened, much to my disappointment. I peppered the witnesses with questions: "Who else was in the car? Did she say anything? How slow was the car going? Did you get a good look? Was she good-looking?"

On warm spring nights when no wind was blowing up from the valley and we had the windows at Ann Lee propped wide open, you could hear some of the traffic on Route 20. One night, just after lights out, we heard a crash - the sounds of snapping trees and twisting metal, and then an explosion - and then a wash of yellow light came through the back windows. We ran out the back door and beheld what was left of a fireball in the sky, now pierced by a tower of flames.

A few days later, we hiked up to the scorched scar in the woods. It had been a gasoline tanker, we were told. The driver had died. There was almost nothing left of the truck. The aluminum tank had melted and flowed like lava and hardened into rivulets that we snapped off and kept as souvenirs. This was near the old dump we had found. I imagined the aluminum flowing down into the pit and filling the old Shaker boot like a mold, creating a sculpted foot of the owner that might last for millennia. What would future archaeologists think?

The world intruded on us with violence and lust and fire and death on the mountain. We were isolated and protected, but we yearned for the world. We were well cared for, but we never stopped plotting our escape.

The Spirits of Lebanon, Part 1

The poet Robert Frost taught my roommate Dean and I how to bend birches. We read "Birches" in class, and then one Sunday afternoon in late September went up into the woods behind the school to do it.

"...He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground..."

Up the side of the mountain we went, bending the white-barked trees as we went, until we reached a pit, sparkling at the bottom, bits of sunlight bouncing off broken bottles. We went down to investigate.

It was an old dump, ancient really. A recent rain had washed the soil from the top of the pile, from which protruded old medicine bottles, some of them cobalt blue, some with the corks still in them. We kicked through the pile. Here was the rusted business end of a pitchfork. Here a spring and a lead pipe. Then I pulled out a boot, much of it gone but the sole intact. It was an old boot for sure. We surmised it could have belonged to one of the Shakers. I brushed the dirt off and examined it: a hole clear through beneath the ball of the foot, the heel worn away on one side.

Even at that age, I was a skeptic, never having believed in ghosts or anything paranormal. But holding that shoe gave me a chill. Although its owner was probably long dead, this thing still spoke for him, still told me about his gait and the way he dragged his heel.

Would I leave these marks of my existence here? I thought about the wooden benches we sat in for the vespers service every night, the depressions, frictionless and smooth as a baby's skin, worn into the wood first by the rumps of Shakers and then by generations of schoolboys in corduroy pants. These material things long outlive us, but our use of them transforms them and lends them our spirit. Then I looked at the young birches, bowing respectfully toward the ground from our play, and wondered if they'd straighten or just grow the way we'd bent them.

Dean threw himself away from the thin trunk and was lowered slowly to the ground, collapsing in laughter and a shower of yellowing leaves. Pieces of poem tumbled from his lips.

"One could do worse than be a swinger of birches," he yelled.