Off season, Chautauqua Institution takes on a new life. The streets are quiet. One can drive the lovely lanes and the lake road and see almost no one. The lucky annual residents must revel in their great good luck to live in a place so beautiful every turn looks like a movie scene. I love Chautauqua for so many good reasons – it helped educate me. It introduced me to authors, artists and musicians I would never have met. It exposed me to a community and a culture where beauty and learning are held in esteem. It offered some of the best Sunday sermons of my life. It brought together family and friends in unforgettable ways.

I love Chautauqua most in autumn when the giant trees are majestic in the brisk air, celebrating their warm colors in every possible shade and size of leaf. The maples may be the prettiest of all with shades from gold to orange to magenta. The beech trees seem even taller and grander, the bark sleeker, the leaves deep aubergine scattered on the ground.

Chautauqua Institution is a unique place in America, similar in some respects to more heralded places in other states such as Tanglewood in the Berkshires or Wolf Trap in Virginia. But it is essentially different from any other place I have ever know: It was founded out of fidelity to the notion of bringing education to the people.

And it was founded on faith. Those are ideals that set it apart. Historically, it was called the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly when founded in 1874 by two Methodists. By 1878, citizens could take correspondence courses in many courses offered by the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. A few decades later, an entire movement – the Chautauqua Movement – began, founded on these principles of engaged religion and bringing education to the common people. Music became integral to the curriculum. The institute is devoted to education and edification, to God, hope, democracy and beauty.

We all know that famous people from around the world have been welcomed to Chautauqua from presidents to inventors, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about the 700 acre grounds is the 19th century architecture of so many of its grand houses and buildings. It’s worth a trip to Chautauqua just to wander the beautiful streets and lanes to see these remarkable buildings.

When I was an English major at SUNY Fredonia in the 70’s, I took a summer course or two at Chautauqua in Norton Hall. One was taught by a colorful professor named Tristram Barnard. Mr. Barnard – one of the few professors at Fredonia without a doctorate – looked like an ex-boxer. He was tall and broad shouldered; his nose had at some point in his life taken a beating. He smoked in class, Kools, one after the other, as he paced back and forth and told us all about great works of American literature and the authors who wrote them. Tris Barnard was full of anecdotes and wry jokes. He knew writing-what made it good, what made it art. He rarely paused for a breath but to inhale a Kool throughout entire class periods. When he was done with his lecture which I must say was more like performance art, the room would fall silent. Students sat punch drunk for a minute before gathering their things to leave. That is what great art does; it makes you silent. Barnard was his own kind of artist.

I met authors Kurt Vonnegut and Ken Kesey, to name just two, at Chautauqua over the years.Vonnegut was as entertaining and endearing as Kesey was moribund and off putting. Vonnegut talked to everyone and answered every question. He stayed for a good hour after his lecture was over at the Amphitheatre just talking with us all as if it were a dinner party. He was relaxed and sassy, witty and urbane. Of all authors I’ve ever met, he was the most critical of the human race. Yet one on one with people, he was generous of heart and time. Someone asked him, what do you think about the future of the human race? He was quiet a moment. His eyes in any case are doglike, sad, moist. “I don’t’ think much,” he said as he shook his head. “I give us 50 years.”

I love the simple things about Chautauqua too like going on a Sunday with my father and my sister, my aunts, our cousin Larry who drove us in his speedboat, and now and then with my own sons Aryl and Brennan. Just lunching with the family at one of the hotels or on lolling about on the green made for a special day. We often walked the lanes and spent time wandering in the bookstore too. We bought the New York Times. We bought books of poetry. We bought coffee mugs with Chautauqua written on them. It seemed to be always sunny and fair on those days, so special they are like yesterday in my mind.

The last time I saw my musician friend Chu Nero was at the bookstore in Chautauqua. He died at 60 of cancer and left his friends in shock. I like to imagine him sitting on the deck behind the bookstore with a cup of coffee in his hand, his wild hair flowing, his smile warm. Some of my best memories with my Aunt Marian too occurred there on the grounds. Aunt Marian liked to go on Sundays to hear the sermon. She liked a bargain and it was and remains free to enter the Institution for a few hours on Sunday. She was in her 80’s during our last visits there yet she walked without complaint a good mile from where we parked to the Amphitheater and back again after stopping for lunch. She always paid for our lunch. She loved the community of Chautauqua, which reminded her of the Library of Congress where she had worked for 25 years. I think she felt at home at Chautauqua.

On a recent visit my sister and I parked down by the Bell Tower and walked the lanes together, enjoying the fresh cool air and choosing our favorite houses from among all the fine ones lining the streets by the lake. It was hard to choose as we loved them all and could imagine ourselves living there for the summer or for every day of the year. We are reminded of the astonishing beauty of Chautauqua Lake and this county. We are quieted by memories of past that swell up in us. Chautauqua reminds us that art and beauty are central to our lives, that they nourish us and inspire us, that like Oscar Wilde said, If I had but 5 pounds, I’d spend half on a loaf of bread and the rest on flowers. Ah, Oscar. I’m with you.