Last week I had the pleasure of attending a SEPTLA (Southeastern PA Theological Library Association) meeting in Gettysburg, PA. It was even more of pleasure since I didn’t have to drive. I’ve never been so I was looking forward to seeing the beauty of an PA autumn landscape and, if time permitted, checking out the Gettysburg battlefield.
It was a two hour drive so I brought along a scarf I’m knitting for my dad’s Christmas gift (more on that later), and a reading assignment for my Gospel & Acts class. I met up with my co-worker at 6:30 am, giving us enough time to get ahead of rush hour traffic. He was a 1/2 hour late, but we were on the road and chatting, almost non-stop, in no time. I think we were both talking to stay awake, especially since I wanted to curl up in the backseat and go back to sleep. Since sleep was not an option, I grabbed the knitting bag.
I knit three rows before realizing I completely screwed up the first row I knit. I mean, how do you mess up stockinette? Yeah, I was sleepy. I couldn’t even frog it back the three rows because I couldn’t figure out how to untwist the mistake stitches on the end. I gave up, frogged two rows and knit along until I ran out of yarn. There was nothing else to do except pick my co-worker’s brain about theological topics I didn’t understand or interested in learning more about.
We made it to the quaint town of Gettysburg and it was beautiful. I tried snapping pictures, but we were in morning traffic, following MapQuest and I needed to help navigate. But, once on the campus, I was not hurting for scenic shots to take. I mean, there were canons everywhere, so naturally I wanted to know how far away was the battlefield. Well, dear reader, I was standing right in the middle of it. You heard me. I was on the battlefield. Apparently, the seminary was captured on the second or third day (hope that’s right) of battle by the Confederates and won back by the Union on day five. The story was very interesting and I will definitely plan another trip to Gettysburg just to play “tourist”. Until then, I got the chance to enjoy the campus.
Did I mention how beautiful the library was? No? Well, let me tell you, it is so beautiful (reaching for the thesaurus) inviting. Dark woods, natural sunlight… and a real printing press!
We didn’t stay the entire day and headed back to the city after lunch. We also picked up another passenger allowing me to take full advantage of the backseat so I could “read”. When I woke up we were more than half way home, and the conversation was in full swing. Instead of interjecting myself, I sat back and listened. That’s nice to do every once in awhile.
