Nauvoo Revisited

Once, there was a Catholic nunnery in Nauvoo, IL, the Mississippi river-town founded by Joseph Smith after the Mormons were mobbed out of nearby Missouri.  Nauvoo at its height rivaled Chicago, but soon dwindled to just another podunk, blink-and-you-miss-it Midwest town after Joseph Smith was murdered and the Mormons were mobbed out of America altogether, to settle Utah instead.

That nunnery was bought out by the LDS Church a couple-decades ago, renamed the Joseph Smith Academy (or JSA), and was used to host a semester-program for BYU students studying early Church history.  The program reached its zenith after the Nauvoo Temple was rebuilt in 2002; I myself did a semester there (while a young, drifting college student) in 2005.  We were all repeatedly reassured of what a blessing it was to be there, how the Lord had guided us there, etc.--but unlike other BYUs, this one actually lived up to the hype.  The communal atmosphere of the classes and cafeterias created a sense of egalitarian United Order I haven't encountered since; I rank that semester second only to my mission for sustained Spiritual experiences; and I formed at least a couple friendships there that are still strong today (a feet remarkable when I consider all my other friendships that have forged and faded in the years after).

But then suddenly, without warning, the whole shebang was shut down a year later; this program that had been billed as a blessing in the lives of hundreds of students that fulfilled Prophecy and etc, was terminated without fanfare or explanation, and the JSA was torn down.  An empty field fills its former spot, with nary a line of foundation or a stray-pipe to indicate that a building had ever been there. 

I revisited Nauvoo recently, for the first time since '05, which was a heady experience in and of itself; just contemplating the sheer volume of places visited, people known, knowledge gained, and things I've seen and done in the intervening years, only to at last loop back to where I was while still a wandering young man, was near enough to plunge me into a minor existential crisis.  But the kicker was walking around that empty green field, trying and failing to visualize where the JSA was, or even looked like, and having the sober realization that a place celebrated with such enthusiasm less than a decade ago has since disappeared so completely.

We forget how quickly and thoroughly things can disappear, that the reason places like Stonehenge and Rome and Monte Picchu impress is because they did leave us a pile of ruins in the moonlight; most places leave nothing.  The Hittites were once treated as mythical (they receive no historical mention outside the Old Testament), until archeological evidence was finally found in the 19th-century. 

And what of the many, many places that aren't even mentioned in the Bible?  How many Empires and Peoples have risen and fallen without a trace, or even a memory?  The 18th-century writer Joseph Addison wrote, "look into the Bulk of our Species, they are such as are not likely to be remembered a Moment after their Disappearance.  They leave behind them no Traces of Their Existence, but are forgotten as tho' they had never been."  The JSA is no exception.

Perhaps it's fitting that the JSA should vanish without a trace here; Nauvoo is the city of disappearance.  I mentioned earlier that Nauvoo rivaled Chicago?  We have the 19th-century historical records to prove it, and good thing too, for if you visited Nauvoo today, you'd have no possible conception that such was ever the case.  Here you do not find ancient, abandoned log cabins enveloped in overgrowth; here there be no creaking ghost-town ruins haunted by a few stubborn locals; no scattered house foundations or toppled-brick-walls or weed-covered-pavement indicate that this was once a thriving metropolis.  Only a dozen or so brick-buildings, carefully preserved as museum pieces, still stand from Joseph Smith days.  If it hadn't been for Mormon-tourism, this town doubtless would've withered away into the wind a long time ago. 

And that's just a town from less than 200 years ago, one that rose and fell since the birth of the United States, a country that, historically speaking, is still brand-spanking new.  What of towns that are far older?

Mormonism itself is peculiarly preoccupied with disappearance; the Book of Mormon quotes Isaiah in describing itself as "the voice of a people speaking from the dust."  It claims to be the sole surviving relic of a Pre-Colombian civilization that thrived somewhere in the ancient Americas, but was then wiped out as though it never existed.  "Where is the archeological evidence of these Nephites!" decry the Book of Mormon's critics; now, whatever else may be your reason for accepting or rejecting the Book's historical claims (not to mention its spiritual), the demand for hard artifacts is frankly laughable.  Archeologists know we're lucky to get, say, a single arrowhead, or a piece of pottery, let alone a city of rubble.  The sprawls of Nauvoo vanished without a trace in less than 150 years; the JSA in less than 10.  What then of a nation that disappeared 1,600 years ago?

I don't think we moderns are any more secure.  How many of you have, say, a zip-disc from just the 90s?  How many of you could access it right now, with the computers you have?  Accelerated obsolescence may leave us obsolete in the end. What if a nuclear strike, or an EMP bomb, or even an unusually large solar flare, knocked out all our electronics?  Would we still have access to the "cloud?"  How appropriate that we named the final resting spot of all human data after something that fades and vanishes without a memory!  Oh vanity of vanities, all under the sun is vanity!  Our days are as grass, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the fire. 

These are the thoughts that sifted through my mind, as I walked through that grass field in front of the reconstructed Nauvoo Temple.  "Everything dies honey, that's a fact," sings Bruce Springsteen, "But maybe everything that dies, one day comes back."  Maybe we are all surrounded by places that whisper from the dust, if we could but strain our ears enough to hear 'em.  Most places disappear so completely, that only God can reveal them.