Sublime, noun or adj. 9. Of a feature of nature or art: that fills the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; that inspires awe, great reverence, or other high emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur.

– Oxford English Dictionary

Since 2019, my wife and I have made biennial efforts to route our long vacation toward one of the USA’s national parks. (She saw the Ken Burns film; I read Neil Peart’s travel books.) For this year’s trip, we ended up circling the Great Lakes, with a side quest to visit college friends in upstate New York. And while our trek had plenty of normal vacation fun — and even a few proggy moments — it struck me looking back how much time we spent in the presence of the sublime. (It cropped up on our 2024 vacation, too!)

The core destination on our eastward journey was Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park. A unlooked-for haven of forests, rivers, byways and trails situated between Cleveland and Akron, entering the park cast us back to the era when mule-drawn shipping plied the Ohio & Erie Canal, passing settlements and small towns on the way to the Mississippi River. But our initial destination within Cuyahoga Valley, Blossom Music Center, casts a distinctly modern silhouette on this pastoral scene.

The Cleveland Orchestra has long been considered one of America’s top five symphony organizations, alongside New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. Since the late 1960s, they’ve played summer concerts on Blossom’s 800-acre grounds. On the Saturday night we attended, 4,000 folks filled the pavilion and dotted the expansive lawn as a remarkably youthful orchestra took to the faux-rustic stage for a challenging program.

With young Czech conductor Petr Popelka on the podium, German violin phenom Veronika Eberle tackled one of the monuments of her instrument’s repertoire, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Twice as long as any similar work of the period, the Concerto stands out for its focus on cooperation between soloist and orchestra instead of contention. Eberle proved more than equal to the broad, lyrical span of the work, graciously in tune with her colleagues through the Allegro’s subtle, sonorous build, the Larghetto’s placid thematic variations and the vivacious, folksy Rondo. A well-deserved standing ovation led to Eberle dashing off a Bartok duet with concertmaster Joel Link. Then Popelka proved himself a maestro to watch and hear with a sprightly, energetic reading of Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony. Music, audience and surroundings came together for a thoroughly delightful evening. The rain that had threatened throughout even held off until after the concert!

(Click here to hear Eberle’s recording of the Beethoven with the London Symphony Orchestra. Click here to hear Popelka conduct symphonic works by Czech composer Biedrich Smetana. Young musicians like these fill me with hope for the future of orchestras and their historic repertoire! A month remains in TCO’s Blossom season; full info is here.)

After an evening’s rest, the park called and we answered, hiking to and around the breathtaking Brandywine Falls (a hop, skip and jump from our B&B):

On our outbound journey the next day, we hiked The Ledges, a massive rock outcropping with its own ecosystem, actual bat caves, and a spectacular overlook of the Valley’s forests.

Following time with our friends, we tackled the sublimest of the Sublime for our wedding anniversary: the American side of Niagara Falls, experienced from multiple angles via New York’s expansive state park (the oldest in the country), a boat trip on the Maid of the Mist, and a river-level viewing platform where the now-obliterated Cave of the Winds once beckoned.

And it’ll surprise no one that, cutting back through Canada to head home, we stopped at the annual Stratford Festival for a taut, spellbinding production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. One of the Bard’s late tragicomic romances, this one’s got it all: just in the first half, there’s jealousy and skullduggery, messages from the gods, false accusations with fatal results, plus the most notorious stage direction in theatrical history, “Exit, pursued by a bear.” How Shakespeare fashions a happy ending from of these tangled threads (hint: a flash-forward of 16 years is involved) is a marvel in and of itself, but a company that can pull off such a drastic vibe shift is even greater cause for wonder. As usual, Stratford was up to the task, with veterans (Graham Abbey’s hapless Leontes, Sara Topham’s noble Hermione, Yonna McIntosh’s searing Paulina, Tom McCamus’ country clod facing off with Geraint Wyn Davies’ citified rogue Autolycus) and new recruits (an enthusiastic Marissa Orjalo and a passionate Austin Eckert as young lovers Perdita and Florizel, Christo Graham’s show-stealing Clown) giving it their all under Antoni Cimolino’s sure-footed direction. If there’s finer theater on this continent, I’d be hard-pressed to find it. (The Winter’s Tale runs through September 27 at Stratford; see it for yourself!)

— Rick Krueger