Learning to Live in a Shared World

Made possible through the generosity of Monica and Norman Maron P ’89, ’93, ’95, ’99, the Maron Travel/Study Grant provides Moravian Academy faculty members with opportunities to broaden their professional work through travel and experiential learning. This year, one of three grant recipients, Rev. Jennifer Nichols, Chaplain, traveled across Alaska with her twins, Ella and Isaiah, seventh graders on our Historic Downtown Campus, to explore how faith, culture, community, and place shape one another.

She traveled the Inside Passage by ship, rode the Alaska Marine Highway by ferry, spent a month living out of a camper van, and flew to remote communities including King Salmon, Kotzebue, Nome, Bethel, and Utqiaġvik. Each way of traveling revealed a different face of Alaska and showed how distance, weather, and access shape daily life.

Her journey centered on questions at the heart of her work as Chaplain: How do the stories of a people shape their understanding of the world? How does a landscape influence what people believe and pass on? What happens when cultures and religious traditions meet?

“The summer became one of the most transformative experiences of my life, changing how I understand the world, myself, and my vocation,” she said.

When their float plane landed at Brooks Camp in Katmai National Park, over a dozen bears waiting on the beach, including a mom with twin cubs. “As a fellow mother of twins, I respected her position. We waited on the pontoons until we could safely come ashore.” Every Katmai visitor attends “Bear School,” where rangers teach a simple set of rules: no running, all food stays in a fenced picnic area, and bears always have the right of way. That afternoon, another bear family settled in for a nap in the middle of the path back to camp. Thirty stranded visitors waited patiently until a ranger with a vehicle helped nudge the bears along.

“Every rule teaches essentially the same thing: You are not alone here,” she reflected. “Attention, restraint, and respect are what made our visit possible, helping to protect the fragile future of this incredible place.”

The lesson continued outside Nome. Nearly three hours from town and without cell service, her rental car suffered two flat tires. A succession of strangers stepped in: one changed a tire, two travelers offered an air pump, and a Lutheran pastor followed the car back to Nome, refilling the tire every few miles. “No single person rescued us,” she said. “Together, they carried us home.”

In Wrangell, Rev. Nichols spent an afternoon with a middle school teacher who spends his summers teaching children traditional pole carving and helping preserve historic poles, including two carved by his grandfather. When he learned about her work, he shared the religious and ethical stories the poles carry. She hopes he will join Chapel virtually this year so students can hear from him directly.

Ancient petroglyphs along Wrangell’s shoreline deepened her thinking about stewardship of heritage: Heritage stays alive in the hands and imaginations of those who practice it, share it, and give it new expression.

Alaska’s Moravian communities held special meaning for the journey. Beginning in 1885, Moravian missionaries, including some from Bethlehem, established missions along the Kuskokwim River in western Alaska. The region’s remoteness helped shape a distinctly Alaska Native Moravian identity that endures in congregations today.

In Bethel, where Yup’ik tradition, Moravian faith, and contemporary life are deeply intertwined, a familiar Moravian star shines from the bell tower of the historic church. In a tree beside it sat a nest of young eagles. In Anchorage, Rev. Nichols worshiped with a congregation whose pastor fishes commercially and closes the church during the height of salmon season.

Rev. Nichols approached these visits with both curiosity and care, holding the living faith of Indigenous Moravian congregations alongside difficult questions about the harms of missionary history. “Holding those questions together required me to listen carefully, resist easy conclusions, and consider whose perspectives shape the stories we tell,” she said.

Stories of bears, glaciers, carved poles, and shared resources are already entering Chapel through reflections on wonder, stewardship, belonging, and interdependence. Rev. Nichols hopes they will help students practice looking closely and listening humbly, and ask whose voices they have heard, whose are missing, and what responsibilities come with the traditions they inherit. Among the moments she is most eager to share: flying over the vast, roadless Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and considering some of the earliest human journeys into North America.

“The Maron Grant allowed me to explore the stories, landscapes, and faith communities of Alaska, and to bring that learning into Chapel, helping students practice curiosity, humility, and responsibility in a shared world,” she said.

Deeply grateful to the Maron family and Moravian Academy, she returned with a renewed commitment to helping students care for the world and for one another. Celebrate with us as these stories come to life in Chapel this year.