Tom Shakely

Mount Nittany

Writings about Mount Nittany.

  • Scenic spots should be scenic

    Scenic spots should be scenic

    Last Sunday I woke up in State College and went on an early run through town. I decided at one point that I wanted to see Mount Nittany from the overlook on Penn State’s campus near Beaver Stadium and the Bryce Jordan Center, so that’s where I ran.

    The Mount Nittany Conservancy installed a great informational plaque there a number of years ago, and recently refreshed it with a newer version. It calls attention to the Mountain as our community’s landmark and symbol in such a key way, right where thousands congregate a few special Saturdays each autumn.

    But there’s a problem with this spot, and it’s Penn State’s fault. This is supposed to be a place for admiration of the Mountain. Look closely, and you see what’s actually in front of your face:

    Pay attention to the little things, and the big things take care of themselves. This parking lot light post is a little thing that distracts from the Mountain in a big way. It shouldn’t be there. Neither should those growing trees, which will eventually obscure the lower portion of the Mountain, especially when it’s not March and they’re in bloom.

    Move this stuff to the left, or install smaller posts and shrubs. Scenic spots should be scenic.

  • Conserving Mount Nittany audiobook

    Conserving Mount Nittany audiobook

    When I finished Conserving Mount Nittany in 2013, I knew I wanted to see it released as an audiobook, too. Since Ben Novak founded the Mount Nittany Conservancy and since his experiences feature so prominently in the book, I sat down with him for a few hours that summer and we recorded the raw reads of the book. Those reads sat in Google Drive for about 18 months before the Nittany Valley Press could produce those reads into something presentable.

    Nittany Valley Press has done that, and Conserving Mount Nittany is now available on Amazon and Apple in audiobook format. I’m also making it available below for free, because we want the story of Mount Nittany to be accessible to the widest interested audience. An Amazon or Apple purchase is still the best way to ensure you get a lifetime copy that’s all your own and that you can bookmark and listen to on any device. All proceeds benefit Centre Foundation’s Mount Nittany Conservancy and Shakely Family Conservation funds.

  • •

    ‘Conserving Mount Nittany’ in the bookstore

    ‘Conserving Mount Nittany’ in the bookstore

    As of a few weeks ago, Conserving Mount Nittany is available in the Penn State Bookstore on campus, along with Nittany Valley Press’s The Legends of the Nittany Valley. It’s very meaningful for me to see this happen.

    Not just because I wrote Conserving Mount Nittany. Not just because I want to see more people learn about Mount Nittany. It’s mostly meaningful to me because we didn’t make it happen.

    Alex Koury graduated in May and will be teaching in Japan later this year, and was working on a class research and writing project. After searching for information about Mount Nittany online, he came across our books and made Mount Nittany the focus of his semester writing project, relying on three of our books as his source material.

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    What started out for him as a routine class assignment turned into something more. And by the time he had turned in his final report, finished the class, and was set to graduate, he went into Penn State’s Bookstore and suggested they carry these Nittany Valley Press books that are now available in the Local Interest section.

    I’ve never met Alex Koury. I’ve never communicated with him. I learned about all of this secondhand.

    But the way these books became available in the Penn State Bookstore is a perfect example of Nittany Valley Press’s value. Set aside vision, programming, finances, etc, and determine whether the mission has changed a single person’s life in some way.

    Alex’s semester project is a witness that Nittany Valley Press changed a part of his life, and his wanting to help others have a similar experience through easier access to the books he encountered is a great example of paying it forward.

  • Considering Mike Lynch’s Overlook

    One of the insights in Conserving Mount Nittany is that the Mountain has stayed a remarkable, natural place close to Penn State largely because it has been left alone. The conservators of the Mountain have never been interested in making the Mountain over in their own image, but in letting the Mountain be itself.

    What does this mean? It means you won’t find asphalt trails to make the hike easier. It means you won’t find benches littering the sides of the trails. It means you’ll follow paths marked by little blue or white marks on the trees, and only the bare minimum of signage. This is how we addressed it in the book:

    TAS: One of the things the Mount Nittany Conservancy does an excellent job with is maintaining hiking paths across the Mountain. Coupled with marketing efforts across the region, are you concerned about the risk to dilute the natural experience of the Mountain? What about problems that come with greater numbers of visitors like erosion?

    BN: In 2000 I left the Nittany Valley and moved to Bratislava, Slovakia. One of the things that crushed me during my eight years in Europe was that so much of the world had become globalized.

    What I mean is that many of the historic palaces, castles, and villages had become completely oriented to tourists. The paths and steps and signs that are set up for tourists end up having the effect of becoming a central part of what you’re experiencing. It becomes very difficult to feel as if you’re really walking on the same steps that a Medieval knight walked on, for instance. It’s as though they put a wall of glass or transparent plastic between you and all the things you came to see and touch. Imagine that you lived in a world where the only way you could ever see people fall in love is in the movies.

    Too much marketing and tourism-minded positioning and too many “improvements” can seriously take away from the thing you’re trying to promote. Too many changes can remove the naturalness of the experience.

    There’s always a risk of this with Mount Nittany, but so long as there’s a feeling for conserving the Mountain “as is” rather than constantly wondering what might be added to make it even better, things will be alright. Remember, the goal of Lion’s Paw and the Mount Nittany Conservancy has always been to preserve Mount Nittany “in its natural state.”

    I think we should view Mount Nittany like Central Park in Manhattan. We want people to go and visit and enjoy. At some point we might have to do things like put in brick steps in places to ease problems like erosion, but in general you don’t set out to try to improve Central Park. You just let it be, and people will keep coming because it’s the one place that’s just been left as-is.

    When I was on the Mountain recently, I visited the Mike Lynch Overlook. It’s the most famous of the overlooks because it offers a beautiful view of Penn State and State College.

    Erosion is a constant concern at the overlook. It’s a heavily taxed part of the Mountain that has to bear enormous numbers of visitors.

    In the spirit of Ben Novak’s remarks, I imagine it’ll eventually be necessary to convert the overlook in the way the Nittany Lion Shrine area was recently redone.

    In other words, maintain the naturalness of the overlook but sustainably address the problem of erosion by making this spot of the Mountain one with a few levels of porous rubber/concrete with built-in seating that respects the area.

  • Mount Nittany and right of first offer

    Mount Nittany and right of first offer

    In writing Conserving Mount Nittany, one of the things that struck me was how little land acquisition has been a part of the Mount Nittany Conservancy’s focus over the past two decades.

    In speaking with one of their board members, I came to understand that the perspective was essentially: “Land is expensive.” But that’s always been the case. And I think in the coming decades land acquisition around the lower portions of the Mountain will become important.

    As Lemont and the larger Nittany Valley area develops, it’ll become increasingly important to keep Mount Nittany’s skirt as natural as possible.

    The first half century of Mount Nittany’s conservation was the story of large scale property acquisitions that define the Mountain in our imaginations. The next century will deal with tell the story of the successes or failures of the conservation of the less distantly visible properties that serve as the gateways to the Mountain and its trailhead. In most cases this will involve purchases of homes or lots, and either repurposing them or returning them to nature.

    A recent Mountain hike is what got me thinking about this. And seeing the property above, located just near the Mount Nittany Road trailhead, specifically got me thinking about how to cultivate relationships with private land owners.

    I don’t think the approach for Mountain conservation in the future will or should be about large scale fundraising campaigns for new lands. I think the Mount Nittany Conservancy should consider something like the following approach:

    1. An annual development campaign that aims to generate a higher and more consistent level of unrestricted gifts which live in an account that’s treated as siloed and sacrosanct for the purpose of new property purchases.

    2. In conjunction with professionalizing its development approach, the Mount Nittany Conservancy should actively form relationships with any/all property owners around the Mountain’s lower portions, with the goal of the owners agreeing to give the Mount Nittany Conservancy right of first offer if/when they should choose to sell their homes or lots.

    This is a simple approach that involves two things the Mount Nittany Conservancy has historically been good at doing: storytelling and communication.

    It simply expands on these strengths through a one page legal agreement with property owners to formally acknowledge that they’ll give the Mount Nittany Conservancy the first chance to buy their land if/when they ever decide to sell it.

    And if they do, the Mount Nittany Conservancy would already be positioned at minimum to take out a loan for it and pay off the remaining through its annual campaigns.

  • Hiking Mount Nittany

    I got a text last Thursday night from a good friend, asking if I wanted to join him on a hike of Mount Nittany in the morning. We met the next morning at Irving’s in State College, caught up a bit over coffee, and drove to Lemont.

    It’s been a while since I’ve been on Mount Nittany, and the hike was a good one both for connecting with the Mountain and with my friend. We spent about three hours of the morning traveling the Blue trail, the White trail, and periodically enjoying the overlooks.

    We also visited the Life Estate square inches, which I probably hadn’t visited since 2010 or so. I hope the Mount Nittany Conservancy spruces up the presentation of this spot a bit, maybe replacing the signpost with a small rock plaque telling this part of the Mountain’s story.

    Later at the Mike Lynch Overlook we ran into an entire field trip of young people enjoying a rest after their hike. It was the fullest I’ve ever seen Lynch’s overlook.

    Arriving, we were the only ones at the trailhead. Leaving, we were simply one of more than a dozen parked cars. The Mountain is popular.

  • Mount Nittany Night

    The Mount Nittany Conservancy hosted its fifth annual Mount Nittany Night at Mount Nittany Vineyard & Winery in Linden Hall last night and awarded its annual Friend of the Mountain award.

    I’ve been in State College for three of the five Mount Nittany Nights so far thanks in each case to scheduling coincidence, though I didn’t attend this time. Mount Nittany Night is a great celebration of the Mountain’s conservation and literally the Mountain’s fruits in the form of lots of pretty remarkable Pennsylvania wine. (My go-tos are Nittany Mountain Blush and Tailgate Red.)

    Thinking about Mount Nittany Night reminds me of Mount Nittany Conservancy’s great podcast that Bob Frick produced and which I wrote about in October in Onward State:

    In “The Legends of the Nittany Valley,” folklorist Henry Shoemaker records some of the American Indian and settler stories that provide much of the cultural and historical basis for Penn State mythology, including Mount Nittany as our sacred symbol and pristine retreat, the love story of Princess Nittany and Lion’s Paw, and even the reclusive Nittany Lion.

    Yet stories alone have no independent life to speak of; their significance grows from the affection, tenderness, and patience of the reader, from the moments spent in solitude or near friends with the words of a long-dead peer over a coffee at Saints or W.C. Clarke’s. Herodotus or Dante would be nothing without the gift of time and attention paid in gratitude by the living reader. It’s through that gift that we reverence something culturally significant, and make something from the past a part of our present time.

    This is what tradition is, if distilled — the continuing act of encountering the past, helping it come alive again in some way, and then in due course becoming a part of the past ourselves as we look to the future. This beautiful notion is encapsulated in an even more beautiful, practical example: The singing of Robert Burns’s 1788 “Auld Lang Syne” every New Year’s Eve. It’s a lyrical and literal Scottish injunction to remember our friendships and honor days gone by on the eve of a new time.

    This helps explain why Mount Nittany, by all accounts an ordinary Pennsylvania mountain, is nonetheless sacred for Penn Staters and the people of the valley. As with the stories of the past, we’ve infused the Mountain with a distinctive meaning. …

  • Mount Nittany by drone

    Mount Nittany by drone

    I’m writing this from New York where temperatures this week are falling to the low teens and there’s freezing rain and ice on the windows. I’m thinking about warmer temperatures, and specifically thinking about State College in summer for two reasons.

    First, because I’ve been working on and off recently on audio production for the audiobook version of Conserving Mount Nittany, which I expect will be available within the next few months. We recorded the dry reads for the audiobook in Pattee/Paterno Libraries at Penn State last summer.

    Second, because that project brought me back to aerial photos of Mount Nittany from the summer that a friend took with his drone. The photo of Mount Nittany above is one of those that the drone captured as it flew around State College.

    It would be neat for the Mount Nittany Conservancy to purchase a corporate drone and regularly fly it over the Mountain to capture unusual shots throughout the seasons.

  • •

    Specialness of place

    This David Foster Wallace quote came across a social stream:

    “[Tourism] is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.”

    This immediately brought to mind a strain of thought in Conserving Mount Nittany—part of a larger conversation on how to conserve something special while still allowing it to be accessible:

    Ben Novak: One of the things that crushed me during my eight years in Europe was that… many of the historic palaces, castles, and villages had become completely oriented to tourists. The paths and steps and signs that are set up for tourists end up having the effect of becoming a central part of what you’re experiencing. It becomes very difficult to feel as if you’re really walking on the same steps that a Medieval knight walked on, for instance. It’s as though they put a wall of glass or transparent plastic between you and all the things you came to see and touch. Imagine that you lived in a world where the only way you could ever see people fall in love is in the movies.

    Too much marketing and tourism-minded positioning and too many “improvements” can seriously take away from the thing you’re trying to promote. Too many changes can remove the naturalness of the experience.

    We’re marketing (and buying into marketing) that promises authenticity. When those campaigns succeed—in land conservation, in tourism of a “newly discovered” destination, in realtors promoting a new neighborhood—it becomes really difficult to sustain the authenticity that stoked our interest in the first place.

    To maintain the sort of authenticity that leads to a place being considered special, think about the characteristics that contribute to that specialness of place. Foster more of those if you want to conserve the essence.