Out of the Box: Discovering Crawfordsville
I have always been fascinated by small towns. Coming from a New York City suburban background to Crawfordsville, Indiana was an adjustment that for me could not be overcome simply by time—I realized that in order for me to deepen my understanding of this college, an exploration of the town was necessary.
The sun was directly overhead as I approached Main Street. Few automobiles dotted the empty street, and across the road stood an archaic stone building. I crossed the street and wandered in like a tourist. Welcomed to the Carnegie Museum, I was beckoned to view the exhibits. The collections showcased pieces of the past—articles loaned by citizens, representing their history displayed for others to discover. In turn, my ears were attracted to the hum of a television sitting in a nook playing a documentary on Sugar Creek. After watching for a short while, I was on my way to the creek.
“In every walk with nature,” the naturalist John Muir once said, “one receives far more than he seeks.” Though perhaps counterintuitive, this quote may be more fully appreciated by those who stumble upon nature, surprised by its placement in modern society. As one begins to approach the creek, there stands to the side of the road a steep drainage pathway running down to the river, hidden and overgrown with shrubbery and weeds. Moving some branches out of the way, I crawled down the long forgotten drainage, which was clogged with concrete stones, sticks, and various metal objects and approached the muddy bank of the creek.
Across the brook, a small number of people fished and lounged on the pebble beach opposite my position. I noticed a shallow section under the bridge and began skipping across the large rocks that jutted out of the water, eventually crossing and settling on the rocky shore.
Standing on the bank, the urge to swim possessed me and I slipped into the clear creek water. The creek was warm, and I began to slowly float effortlessly down the windy waterway. A small number of fish began to follow me, and my mind was drifting as the sunlight reflected off the water’s surface.
Before long, the current became swifter, with the shallow water revealing the tops of the white rocks ahead, and I decided it was time to end the swim, crossing back over the creek while starting up the clogged drainage pathway.
Back on the roadway, I began heading east when a historical marker got snagged on my eye, marking the location for a rotary jail. I was ushered in by a volunteer worker, who led me to the upper floors of the prison and left me to explore. The jail is centered on the rotating cell block, with white bar guards enclosing the units. Some graffiti, carved long ago and forgotten, is still visible on the walls, an example of one generation literally leaving its mark for another.
She then offered to manually crank the cell. As the white bared walls creaked and began rotating, I pictured the prison mates, in their prison garb, spending their days incessantly spinning, counting rotation after rotation. Within these walls one comes to terms with the human aspect of time—the idea of suffocation by isolation outside a society that encourages sociality. When one is enclosed within one’s monotonous daily schedule, the wonder of adventure is strangled by structure.
As I exited the jail, the bright sunlight forced my eyes to squint downwards before adjusting. Where had the time gone? It had been hours since I began my stroll, a walk through a town understood by nature but occupied by people. Every town, large or small, offers an education that can be grasped by exploration. When one steps outside his boxed environment, it is then that one can grasp the true definition of learning.
