Traveling Troubadours: “Sign of a Salemite”

By: Clare Buchanan

I left Los Angeles in a hurry. 

I usually leave Los Angeles in a hurry, for various personal reasons, but this time, on January 7th, I was actually fleeing from something tangible. The Palisades fire seemed to watch me with disdain as I lifted into the sky, towards a new country and towards a new era of my life. How dreadfully symbolic it is to watch your hometown burn from a window seat on a crappy plane. How strange it is to feel the primal relief that washes through you, the thought that runs through your mind rampantly like a virus: “I survived.” This thought is almost immediately followed up by a wave of guilt as you realize you have left your entire family behind.

These are large emotions that I know how to deal with.

It’s the smaller emotions that linger. Like the feeling of displacement upon my first days arriving at Harlaxton Manor in Grantham, England.

For context, The Salemite’s copy and layout editor, Samantha Hogsett, and I are studying abroad in the UK for the entire spring semester. Salem College has a partnership with an American university that owns a manor in the East Midlands of England, about one hour north of London by train, called “Harlaxton Manor.”  

My orientation into Harlaxton College was discombobulating. After a couple of haphazard days of trying to orient myself into a new environment, it became clear to me that some students were more well-acquainted with Harlaxton than others. Many students from the University of Evansville had older friends who had gone to Harlaxton years prior. Many students from Belmont and Texas Lutheran University had professors teaching classes at the manor. And Sam and I had each other. 

The question, “What is the Harlaxton Community?”, plagued me throughout the first week of classes. There was a clear sense of camaraderie in the building and the surrounding grounds between staff and faculty. There was an obvious sense of culture and distinct identity present among my peers, but I struggled to find my own way into it.

I wondered: as Salemites, how would Sam and I fit into this institution? Salem students had gone to Harlaxton before. In fact, there was a time before COVID when students would go all the time. But was there a place today for two Salemites among the already established university cliques from Texas, Indiana, and Tennessee? How would two Salemites get on? 

Were we bound to make this journey alone?

…

Towards the end of the first week of classes, I was wandering around the underground “Bistro”, which is the Harlaxton equivalent of the Café, looking at all the pennants previous students had placed on the walls from their home colleges with pride: Texas Woman’s University, University of South Alabama, High Point University, Baker University, Drake University. 

As is natural when I think of Salem College, I felt misty-eyed and wondered how past Salemites had acclimated to the Harlaxton culture. I thought of their fresh faces arriving at the gargantuan, carved wooden doors of the manor, climbing up those large, Italian marble stairs into the Great Hall for orientation. I thought of how they must have felt extremely out of place in such a grandiose place,or maybe, they felt right at home. 

But, did they ever think of the magnolia tree outside 1772 Hall formerly known as Bitting Hall, and how it collects water in its leaves politely during a summer rainstorm? Or how the Home Moravian church bell tolls four times to mark the hour? (How on God’s green Earth did they even begin to tell the time without the Home Moravian Church bell penetrating their eardrums every fifteen minutes? I feel so disoriented without it.) Did these newly arrived Salemites think back to how they felt as first years at Salem’s orientation, how they sat uncertain in Shirley, hands clasped in their laps, trying not to make eye contact with the OLs as they performed a brave rendition of some musical theatre number, hopelessly adding syllables into the chorus to fit in lessons about college life?

As I waited for my tea in the Bistro, I reflected on what it was going to feel like to feel the North Carolina sun on my skin again. I could almost sink into the feeling as one would sink into a warm bath. It’s a feeling that I’ve built off memories and also future projections not rooted in reality. It’s a place in my mind I go to when I feel lost and without myself. When I feel my soul leave my body like that, it’s a disorienting feeling, one that brings me back to childhood and early adolescence. I usually look for signs around me when this happens, looking for any confirmation that I am still present in this body. And as if given to me straight from the hands of Emma Lehman, Anna Marie Samuel, Mary Babcock, or perhaps even the Lady in White herself, a sign appeared.

The Bistro is dimly lit and is positioned underneath the first floor of the manor grounds. There are no windows so it resembles a cave. Fairy lights hang from the ceilings in grand swoops. It’s common for my eyes to play tricks on me because I have a vast, almost childish imagination. I’ll see creatures lurking on the walls or peeking out from corners and shadows manipulating themselves into figures before me. But I can assure you, readers, my eyes were not playing tricks on me this time. 

I had just picked up my tea and was probably looking around bewildered, searching for a sense of comfort or reminder of home, when the fairy lights next to me began to flicker. Curious, I looked over to my right and saw a Salem College pennant hanging in the corner. This was important for several reasons.

Firstly, a few days prior, I had taken Sam on a journey through the manor, searching for names carved or written in permanent marker on the walls or under the tables from Salem College, names I likely wouldn’t recognize, but would just know to be one of our own. (It’s a Harlaxton tradition that after graduation, you carve your name somewhere in the manor, as a way to say: “I was here!” Very American.) Finding no trace or carving of a Salemite, I felt slightly defeated. Although, it made sense given Salem sibs are not trashy, tacky vandalists who take part in petty crime. 

The night before I had been in the Bistro, playing cards and drinking wine with some theatre kids from Indiana, when I searched yet again for the sign of a Salemite. Perhaps on the wall, in the form of a pennant. Nothing. 

But suddenly, there it was: A Salem College pennant in all its glory. I hadn’t seen the golden crest coveted in blue velvet before because it was humbly hidden behind a ficus tree in the dim lighting. But there stood proof that Salemites had explored this vast frontier before Sam and I had. The relief of knowing I was not the first, and not the last Salemite to set up residence in the Harlaxton Manor, settled in my chest, and I was able to see clearly again. 

We all know this to be true: we can come and go from Salem College. We arrive as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed children and graduate as somewhat grounded and optimistic adults. (Hopefully…) We watch the time pass before us and wonder where it went, whether it’s been two years since our departure at the May Dell, or twenty. We find ourselves in new corners of the world, whether it’s thirty minutes away in Greensboro, or 5,000 miles away in England, and we feel the distance between us and the campus, strong-willed yet quiet. But we return in our minds, hearts, and bodies, to the place that gave us life when we were seventeen going on eighteen, or eighteen going on nineteen, and we remember. Salem will always follow us, no matter where we go. 

Signing off from England, 

-Clare Buchanan

(Assistant Editor-in-Chief, The Salemite.)