Unexpected Discovery Sunday

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010

There are times when life affords serendipity an opportunity to intrude into your world more than others, and I am a firm believer in always giving serendipity its due. Folks like to spend a lot of time talking at end about irony, or vitriol, or perspicacity these days, and I don’t begrudge them their labors. But for me, a dose of serendipity is always more than welcome.

I got such a dose a week ago, as I left Downingtown Friends Meeting after an hour of comfortable reflection. I know folks who contend that an hour’s worth of comfortable reflection should include mostly spiritual concerns or ruminations on the nature of time, space, life, and death, and I would never be so unseemly as to disagree with them in public, but manys a time my thoughts during a period of comfortable reflection drift to somewhat more mundane concerns. The week’s shopping list, for one example. Questions to pose in an upcoming interview with the county’s recycling coordinator, for another. What’d I’d really like for my birthday. Not the sort of thing that would, if discussed in the quiet sanctity of the meetinghouse, inspire one’s fellows to paroxysms of rapture, I’ll admit, but there you have it.

My thoughts last Sunday circled around winter scenes that would make good photographs. I’ve been on a hunt lately for pleasant visual images that will remind me, or inform others, of what beauty we have had spread before us in the past weeks, thanks to the recent snowfalls. Sunday persuaded me that views of the Barndywine Creek from bridges that crossed it would be a good target to aim for, and off I went.

I felt somewhat disappointed, however, because a scene I had come across several months ago and had, at the time, passed the chance to record haunted me, and I did not know where to find it. The scene was composed of a quiet village, that to my mind featured a rippling descent of the Brandywine above which a fine stone span crossed. I thought it would be picture perfect, so to speak, for my mission but could not remember where it was. When you gambol about the confines of Chester County as I do, you can lose track of where you’ve been.

Nevertheless, off I set, choosing my course with a modicum of randomness, but also not without purpose. I could not expect simply to stumble upon a picturesque bridge over the Brandywine Creek accidentally, stumbling about like the proverbial man in the cane break wildly swinging about in hopes of finding a clearing. I knew I had to point myself in the right direction, so I grabbed the ADC map from the rear seat and traced the creek back to a spot where I saw I could find a suitable number of creek crossings. Up Horseshoe Pike to the suburbs of Icedale, east towards East Nantmeal on Chestnut Tree Road. Such is headwaters country, near Struble Lake.

Wouldn’t you know that as soon as I descended the hill towards the village of Cupola that I realized I had rediscovered my quiet village scene. There over the Brandywine was the sturdy stone bridge I had visualized in my mind before leaving, along with a few homes dotted on either side of the creek, and a creekside scene worthy enough of stopping for more moments of quiet, calm reflection. Plus photos.

The Chestnut Tree Road (love the name) serves as a dividing line between Honey Brook and East Nantmeal there at Cupola, and the Brandywine gives the locals a reason to stay put even if their taxes approach half their annual salary. I stayed awhile and shot, then moseyed on in a haphazard way towards Glenmoore and home, finding a few other pleasant scenes of snow covered creek banks and blue-grey sparkling waters to make the trip more than worthwhile.

So now I would like to thank the folks who live in Cupola for letting me intrude a bit on their perfect world. I would like to thank the folks at Downingtown Friends Meeting for giving me a place to spend an hour in calm reflection. I would like to thank the folks who stopped in their Jeep Cherokee as I pulled over on Lewis Mill Road, asking whether I was lost and needed help finding my way.

And mostly, I would like to thank Horace Walpole (1717-1797), Fourth Earl of Orford, author of “The Castle at Otranto,” because he’s the guy who thought up the word, serendipity.