p r e l u d e Stories from the <strong>Moravian</strong> community > Courtesy of Nancy and Ben Evans 2 MORAVIAN COLLEGE MAGAZINE SUMMER 2010
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Chipmunk</strong> <strong>Connection</strong> By Lois Brunner Bastian ’50 How could the lives of two <strong>Moravian</strong> <strong>College</strong> alumni—strangers who graduated more than fifty years apart—be linked by chipmunks? It sounds improbable, even impossible. But “uncanny” is a far better word to describe this story. It began many years after I graduated from <strong>Moravian</strong> <strong>College</strong> for Women as an English major. In time, I became a freelance writer/photographer, publishing newspaper and magazine articles on travel and any other subject that piqued my curiosity. That’s when chipmunks bounded into my New Jersey backwoods and became an obsession. Appealing and unapproachable, they presented a challenge. I wanted to know more about their secret lives. When one of them took refuge in a downspout, I saw an opportunity to get closer. Holding out sunflower seeds in the palm of my hand, I would wait and wait by the mouth of the spout. One day, the animal snatched the food and bolted back into the spout. After that breakthrough, the spout became unnecessary. <strong>The</strong> chipmunk would come to me as I sat outside, cautiously climbing my leg, into my lap or onto my shoulder, wherever the food was. So began thirty seasons of observing, hand feeding, watching courtship and mating, as well as photographing a series of mothers together with their litters. Because the mother trusted me, so did her young ones, as I sat beside their burrow. Before the young left to make burrows of their own, I often spent eight hours a day watching their behavior. <strong>The</strong>y examined every leaf, blade of grass, and twig nearby. Trying to stand on their hind legs, they lost their balance at first and toppled over. That would take practice. <strong>The</strong>y teetered on twigs too slender to support them. Fluttering leaves and the shadow of a flying bird sent them fleeing underground. Books about the life cycle of Tamias striatus are plentiful, but I’d never found one describing a mother with her offspring. Hmmm . . . was there a market for such a book? In 2000, <strong>Chipmunk</strong> Family, my nonfiction book for young people, was published. That seemed to culminate my wildlife experience. Until eight years later, when I received a poignant letter. It came from Nancy Evans, a stranger who lived in Lansdale, Pa. She explained that she and her husband, Ben, were the parents of David Evans, who was killed twenty-three days before his twenty-third birthday—and two weeks before he was to graduate from <strong>Moravian</strong>. Dave, a computer art and graphic design major, was awarded his diploma posthumously in May 2004. Nancy wrote to tell me how my story was woven together with Dave’s story. “He was very enamored of chipmunks,” she wrote. “When Dave went hiking with his older brothers, he wished he could catch one for a pet.” As a bereaved mother, she was trying to “stay connected to her son in any way and every way” she could. She and her husband spent time at a local arboretum, hoping chipmunks would appear, as if they represented a message from their son. For Christmas 2007, Ben ordered several chipmunk books for her. “He ran into months-long difficulty trying to purchase your book,” she wrote. “First they backordered it and he waited. <strong>The</strong>n he got notice that it was out of print. He gave up.” In April 2008, Nancy received a package in the mail. It was her husband’s Christmas gift to her: my book. “I opened it and read about you in the Meet the Author section. Well, I stopped in my tracks when I read, ‘Ms. Bastian was born in Bethlehem, Pa., and graduated from <strong>Moravian</strong> <strong>College</strong>.’” Dave’s classmates planted a tree on the Church Street campus in his memory. <strong>The</strong> Evans family comes to Bethlehem regularly to place a wreath beneath it. On one of their visits, we met, after I had moved back to Bethlehem. Nancy ended her letter with these words. “You, your background, and your book are to me another connection with my dear Dave, and I find joy in it! Thank you for the delightful look at these oh-so-charming animals. We are not strangers, but friends who met through a young man and a book.” That alone makes writing the book worth the effort. W Photo by Lois Brunner Bastian A book by Lois Brunner Bastian ’50 (above) was the basis for a healing friendship with the family of David Evans ’04 (page 2). SUMMER 2010 MORAVIAN COLLEGE MAGAZINE 3
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