Chautauqua – My Happy Place - Part 3 - The Lake Abides

 

As published in CP Connections December 2023

Chautauqua – My Happy Place - Part 3 - The Lake Abides

There is a lake in upstate New York that calls to me no matter where I am. For the past decade, I have trekked each summer from North Carolina to a certain cherished, cloistered, Victorian village nestled on the shores of Chautauqua Lake. I have published essays and buttonholed scores of people to describe at length the intellectual and cultural stimulation to be found there. An engineer at heart, I get into details about the number of pipes in the magnificent Massey organ and the tone of the carillon as its notes float over the campus. Yet, each time I am there, I find myself inexorably drawn to the lake and I drink deeply of it to replenish my spirituality.

By ‘drink deeply’, I mean quaffing it metaphorically although I have often swum in the lake and have inadvertently drunk directly from it. I have traversed its length borne over miles of gentle, lapping waves on the vintage paddlewheel steamboat, Chautauqua Belle. I have felt the rocking of and heard the lapping of its rhythmic waves in a number of smaller craft. Of all the ways to experience it, I feel the most rewarding is simply looking out over Chautauqua Lake as the sunlight dapples the ever-changing peaks of its wind-rippled waters.

The lake starts my day peeking through a leafy green frame as I have my breakfast on the porch of my Foster Avenue rental. Its homily is more ecumenical than the service in the Amphitheater I will soon hurry off to. Then, as the sun sets, I experience a special feeling as the lake ends an event-filled day.  Its broad vistas fill my senses as I gaze out from my perch in a rocker on the porch of the Athenaeum, cool drink in hand. Its shiny surface is a mirror, perfect for reflecting on what I have seen and heard at the campus venues. I ask it the questions of the day and its response is always the same, the one it has spoken for centuries, a calming Om wafted through the surrounding trees as it reposes deep in meditation with nature.

At the Institution, the themes change week to week, year to year; the art in the Strohl and Fowler-Kellogg Art Centers regenerates each season, the music filling Norton and McKnight Halls is produced anew each day, but the lake endures. It is both in motion and static; its ever-changing surface belies the unchanging essence of its depths. Water flows into the lake at Mayville and flows out at Jamestown eventually reaching the Gulf of Mexico yet the lake remains constant. Thus, an abiding touchstone, it is there for me and other Chautauquans each time we return - to the Institution, named for its lake and to the lake named by the original inhabitants of the hills that surround it, a name whose meaning has been lost to history.

In truth, as I leave home and point my car northward, it is anticipation of the programming that is on my mind. Yet, as I arrive, I realize it is the lake which has called me back. My first view of the lake, while I am still miles from the Institution, warms my heart in a way no other place can. I tell people Chautauqua is my ‘happy’ place when, in reality, it is my ‘contentment’ place. There is a deep sense of being connected, not just to the Institution but to all that has happened on its hallowed grounds. The land was made holy by the traditions of its original inhabitants, then dedicated and rededicated over the years to education connecting people to their spiritual selves. And it is Chautauqua Lake which has drawn people to this locale through the millennia. It is both a boundary of the Institution and an inseparable part of it.

It is theoretically possible for a person to spend days at Chautauqua without seeing the lake. One could traverse the length of the campus from the Arboretum Garden, across Thunder Bridge, to the Amp, through Bestor Plaza and on to the music venues without experiencing its beauty. For me, I return to the same rental year after year so I can start each day with that vignetted view of the lake from my porch. At the Hall of Philosophy, I position my lawn chair so the lake is in view in the distance beyond the day’s lecturer at the podium. Going for a walk always means taking a route along Lake Drive

As I am writing this reflection on what Chautauqua means to me, I am gathering clothing and living essentials to be packed for this year’s trek to upstate New York. I haven’t plotted the route yet as each year I like to go a different way, to see new things, to be exposed to a broader spectrum of life in America. I have only a vague sense of what the topics for Weeks 7, 8 and 9 will be. We have never been at Chautauqua this late in the season before. I know the music programming will be different but different means new experiences. My wife and I booked weeks 4 and 5 for next year before the topics were even published. We return not for the particulars, rather we go for the overall sense of being in a spiritual community.

While the Chautauqua schedule is closely tied to the topic of the week, in a very real sense, the experience transcends the topics. Life at Chautauqua is, in many ways, a spiritual practice. The lake is part of that practice. More than a physical entity, more than a symbol for Chautauqua’s tranquil ambiance, it is the essence of that transcendence. The lake is the constant presence which binds each generation of Chautauquans together and connects us to all the generations who have come before and to all who will follow. While the lake appears bounded by its cottage-strewn shoreline, the lake’s waters descend to the valley from a wide geographic area. The water leaving the outlet will travel hundreds of miles, merging with and influencing other flows, before eventually mingling with the oceans of the world. Forged by a retreating glacier, it is a timeless testimonial to the role of nature in our lives that transcends all the words ever spoken from the Institution’s altars and podiums.

In the 1998 movie The Big Lebowski, Jeff Bridges plays an iconic character known as the Dude. In the final scene, the character sums up his life view succinctly, “The Dude abides.” As the movie’s plot has revealed, the Dude always remains calm no matter what the situation. His actions show that he is not one to stress and strive, but he does want to be a force for making things right. Throughout, he sets the expectation that people will aspire to be in right relations and the Dude remains calmly present in each moment waiting for that expectation to be met.

Donald Babcock has penned a complementary message in his short poem, “The Little Duck”. He describes a duck riding in the ocean out beyond the surf. The duck has settled itself in the swells. The duck is small and unaware of the vastness of the ocean it is a part of, just as we humans are unaware of the vastness of the universe. But the duck does possess self-awareness:

“And what does he do, I ask you.

He sits down in it.

He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity – which it is.

That is religion, and the duck has it.

I like the little duck.

He doesn’t know much.

But he has religion.”

 

Chautauqua Lake is metaphorically both the Dude and the duck. The lake abides. In the movie, that phrase means the Dude goes with the flow. At Chautauqua, the lake is the flow which sets the tone and pace for life. Those of us coming to the Institution are like the water in the streams that enter the lake. We each bubble and burble along our individual paths until we reach the lake. There we come together, forming a larger entity with a singular purpose. While the lake seems static, we are being transformed as the currents move us toward the outlet. Exiting the lake, leaving Chautauqua, we will make our many ways, meeting and influencing others, until ultimately, we are subsumed into the worlds we live in. And those worlds, in turn, are changed by the transformations that occurred while we were part of Chautauqua.

Similarly, the duck settles itself into its locale, rising and falling with the waves, moved by the currents, in concerted motion with the ebbs and flows of the environment. The duck seems small but is an integral part of nature, at once a singular object and an element in the infinite universe. The duck ‘reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity’ and, in doing so, the duck has religion. Chautauqua Lake has religion. It reposes in the immediate of its glacial valley as if it were boundless in time and space. It is a source of spiritual replenishment into which Chautauquans can settle themselves, safely riding in the troughs while resting from the tumult beyond, buffered from the winds of the external world which froth the wave crests.

And so, when I am not in upstate New York, Chautauqua Lake abides in my heart. It is a presence which brings me its religion and calls me back each year to be once again immersed in community and spiritually refreshed.