Living history

Today I heard gun shots, smelled horse dung, felt the cool dank interior of a stone house, watched lace being sewn, and met Pennsylvanians living on the frontier. It was all in about an hour at the colonial plantation at Ridley Creek, a short drive from Philly. Today was their yearly French and Indian War reenactment, where customed French, British and Indian soldiers skirmish outside a bystander's house. While just past the trees to one side you could see the road, from every other angle you could have been back in the 1760s.


While the reenactors at living history sites like this may not have history degrees, they know the nitty gritty details of daily life in the past far better than I do. These people are truly committed: we even watched the reenactors eating soup, cooked in a pot over a fire in the old house's hearth, in wooden bowls along with chunks of homemade bread. Walking through the house, the smell of damp smoke seemed to seep out of the stone walls. Outside, farm animals wandered freely and there was clanging coming from the blacksmith's barn.

The highlight, of course, was the small battle. I don't know military history very well, but I know that the chaos and confusion, the many shots fired to actually hit somebody, and the women running wailing into the scene were authentic. So what if the French soldiers shouted to each other in English and a British soldier was felled by a fake blow from the wooden end of a rifle? You were there for a few minutes.

Seeing Philly through fresh eyes

I've had many friends visit me on weekend trips since I've moved here, which we've packed with activities matched to the visitor. For one friend, it was a walk to the Italian Market and a drive out to the Morris Arboretum; for another, shopping and barhopping; for all, meetings my friends and going to my favorite gelato place. But my most recent visitor came during the week, in the thick of my teaching and reading schedule, and just wanted to get a feel for what my life here is like.

Which, of course, included gelato and meeting friends. But it also included hanging out in the grad student center, lugging my library books to campus, and wandering around Center City. I was going about my usual routine, but pointing out the little things along the way: the market where I buy produce, the spot in Rittenhouse Square where little kids always play, the prettiest block of Delancey Street, the cute house I love just off Fitler Square. It was a reminder to me of all of the things I like best in the city and in my daily routine.

I was often surprised at the places my friend stopped to take pictures. His pictures choices made me look twice at familiar places; why had I never noticed that beautiful building? Was that the cutest side street to take a picture of?--I knew an even better one. Through his eyes I saw the beauty I had often passed by in hurried walks to campus or to run errands, beauty in the small details we forget to notice. If in travel "one’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things,” I think the guide to the traveler reaps the same benefit.