The week before break is always busy. Everyone knows this, yet every year it comes as a shock. Somehow, as I’m faced by more exams, projects, and presentations than ever, I’m also booked morning to evening with meetings. At meditation on Sunday, Kevin recommended sitting for just 5 minutes when we find ourselves with the least amount of time. Even if we have 200 things to do, he said, those five minutes will make them all feel a lot easier, more worthwhile. Not knowing when I’d have time to make it to my reflection spot today, I decided to go last night around midnight. I was looking at a late night, and was starting to feel the fatigue and stress affect my work. On a whim, I borrowed Lauren’s headlamp and headed down to my reflection spot, camera in hand.
Walking through K-lot with a headlamp, notebook and camera was a self-conscious experience. The few students rushing by gave me confused looks, especially as I passed the last cars and trespassed into the woods. I found the path unrecognizable by the dim patch of light floating before me. I chased the patch of coherence through brambles and over shrubs; the path eventually opening before me. Around the corner I found the Little Westham, whose quiet babble I’d heard from the parking lot. I sat by her edge, placing my camera on an outcrop of rock; the lens set to half-minute exposures, capable of piercing the darkness as I could not. As I waited for the lens to snap shut, my mind drifted out of focus. The darkness around me rippled with the reflection of a street lamp across the road. I only came back to the present as a shuttle pulled out of X-lot. I was worried the headlights would ruin the exposure, but upon its completion I saw the image only illustrated my view more accurately: the roads and parking lots were illuminated, navigable; but as soon as one steps off the path they are lost, tripping in unfamiliar darkness. It’s interesting how we rely on ubiquitous light, penetrating each vein in our imperviously flat surfaces, in order to navigate our daily life. The spaces between paths become holes; almost nonexistent. Of course, it is precisely this lack of human familiarly that protects them; yet their shroud of darkness keeps them mystified, and sometimes, ignored.
Within this ignored space I felt a sense of solitude; I felt that my time in my hole was decontextualized from my midterms, projects, proposals, and summer plans. After some fifteen minutes, however, the cars began to feel dangerous. My little triangle of nature felt claustrophobic, my work pressing in. The more I tried to meditate the more I realized how surrounded I was. I stood up and wound my way back to Lakeview; this time, my eyes adjusted and the path clear. Sometime it’s necessary to isolate myself, but it’s impossible to forget that I’m still connected to campus and the responsibilities which that entails.