The Bascom’s Sculpture Trail

Written By: Luke Osteen | Issue: 2021/07 – July

If you’re like me, an inordinate amount of your day and night is spent staring at a screen.

Whether your work depends on your online presence, or your sanity requires that you spend random free moments and hours engaged in social media, or you desperately need to unwind from the last 16 months of free-floating pandemic anxiety by treating your eyeballs to whatever Netflix or Hulu or Amazon deem necessary to your mental and emotional survival, well, there you are.

I don’t know if there’s quantifiable data to support this contention, but I swear that I can detect my IQ slowly diminishing as my screen time increases. There’s a distinct dulling of the senses and a nagging supposition that it’s not supposed to be this way. 

Normally, I’d escape by way of undertaking a hike of the sort Brian O’Shea so masterfully describes in these pages. Or stepping out and resolving to watch and listen for whatever feathered neighbor has been spotlighted by our William McReynolds. 

And, since this is the season, taking in a performance offered by the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival. Think of it – the masterworks of Mozart or Beethoven presented by the finest musicians in the world. 

But last Sunday, I lacked the time to indulge in any of these escapes.

I’d been sitting at my desk for hours, working on the pages that you’re enjoying at this moment (right?) and I’d grown, let’s be diplomatic here, ripe. Plus, I’d been editing the H-C Land Trust’s story, and I was feeling a bit queasy after writing and thinking about Snot Otters..

And those hectic days leading up to publication don’t allow time for a hike into the deep woods or an inspiring vista.

But it turned out that an easy solution was right in front of me, or one-eighth of a mile in front of me. 

Tricia decided that we’d pay a visit to the Horst Winkler Sculpture Trail. That’s a little green jewel that wanders through The Bascom’s campus and it’s packed with wonderments both subtle and startling.

And, since it unwinds beneath a cool canopy of branches and shadows a babbling tributary of Mill Creek, the effect is one of being miles and years from downtown Highlands in the summer.

The sculptures are arrayed across the trail and they never cease to surprise or beguile. And since there are outsized Seussian benches scattered about, you’re constantly invited to sit and contemplate. 

And, this was a marvelous surprise, the trail is now the outdoor setting for the Read2Me Story Walk How Do You Wokka-Wokka by Elizabeth Bluemle and illustrated by Randy Cecil. As you take in the story page by page, you’re invited to participate in activities that’ll challenge you to move and, this is important, be a bit silly. 

We emerged from the trail 20 minutes later and 20 years younger. I promise there’s magic here.