In December of 1987 that second-hand Kashmir coat was already 20 or 30 years old. And I was a budding young punk, an emo, or Goth, I don’t know what. But I’d just turned 17 and discovered cigarettes, and long walks with my new-used Kashmir coat, which was long and black and fit perfectly.

We lived in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: part of the Lehigh Valley, a grouping of towns not quite cities, with villages in between. The name Bethlehem was an ode to the Bible, as were several others in the area: Nazareth, Egypt, Emmaus, Jordan. Whatever it was called I felt trapped. So I took long walks and smoked—and I listened to music and brooded. And I wished I was somewhere far away.

Being the town of Bethlehem, the city put a large star on a nearby hill and illuminated it around Christmas. It was simple and white with many long, triangular points and they called it a Moravian star, named after a town in Germany.

One afternoon as the sun went down I got my coat and climbed the hill to the star with my Walkman and cigarettes. The hills were brown and bald, and down below a muddy river curled along a set of railroad tracks leading to distant coal towns and steel mills, places long since abandoned.

I climbed the winding backroads past small houses dotting the hillside, modest abodes they called row homes, each one connected to its neighbor and divided by a metal railing with a tiny porch, an aluminum screen door and small vestibule inside, plastic Christmas decorations in the windows, twinkling lights. But they all looked the same to me, and brought no cheer.

By the time I reached the star it was growing dark, with lights along the streets below and views in every direction. I’d never seen Bethlehem from that vantage and the town looked storybook from above. But as I came to the star I was surprised by how small it looked, how unimpressive, with the pavement leading to the top of the hill so you could drive a car right to it with no sign even, just the star on its side, on the ground. I’d come all this way expecting a grand display, but realized it looked better from afar.

Many years later I’d find myself in a similar position—this time in southern Germany—climbing another hill to a vantage point, another place I called home. My mom owned an old house in the center of a small village and if you focused hard enough you could pick it out amid the churches and rooftops and barns, looking down from above.

We were visiting for Christmas and I could imagine my family inside just waking, beginning their day. It was an odd feeling, that shift in perspective, to climb a hill and look down upon that large house so tiny from a distance, knowing people so close to me were inside. It made me feel both connected to them and removed, as I often felt with myself, some space within me I could not close.

So I took long walks in the morning and came back feeling revived, because being outdoors helped me clear my head. Ironically the search for self turned up the best results when I stopped looking for it. That was the appeal of getting outside, of being in the woods or by a lake: you saw how much of the world there was outside of yourself. And you could imagine you were a part of it too.

There was a time as a young man I often wished I was somewhere far away. If the star was a version of myself I hoped would bring me insight, it was better admired from a distance. And perhaps that is what creates this space in me, is not seeing the difference. Between what I have and want, who I am or might be. For once I long to be close.

Categories: Memoir, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir