May 2008

Back in Brooklyn, I unexpectedly ran into a friend from Middlebury on my block yesterday. It might not seem so strange; a lot of Middlebury students hail from the Big Apple as I do. This chance encounter caught me off guard though because I had just been thinking about how good it felt to be walking around in a city—the noise and smells, the sights and the pace—how different it was from Middlebury. How different the busyness of urban life was from that of life at school, how strange it felt to look at the people I passed and not recognize a single face in a neighborhood that otherwise felt so familiar.

As I turned the corner, I made eye contact with the next presumed stranger. Instead, I saw a face that I recognized. Sylvia and I chatted for a few minutes, I met her mother, and we walked away with tentative plans to meet up soon. It was so nice to have the familiarity of both of my “worlds”—Middlebury and New York—all in one moment.

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Tonight I made a comment to my sister that she should use her backyard more. As a graduate student, she told me that she would love to get outside more and “take advantage of nature,” but lately she has not had the time. For someone who grew up in a city, in a land of high-rise buildings and attached houses, this idea of nature is not so strange. David Rakoff summed it up best: if a New Yorker wanted greenery, he should order a plate of spinach.

I chuckled as I looked out at my sister’s fenced-in plot of nature. At Middlebury, I have been “introduced” to nature firsthand. I spent my first few semesters admiring the natural beauty from afar—from my room in Ross, overlooking the Champlain Valley and the Adirondacks to the west. I had a few outdoor labs for my first-year seminar, but I think I was too wrapped up in the newness of school to realize what a fantastic opportunity the surrounding areas offered. It was only this year when nature and I finally had a real introduction. I went on my first hike—a great hike—up Camel’s Hump, part of the Green Mountains in Huntington. From the peak you can look across from New Hampshire to New York. It was one of the best days I’ve had in Vermont.

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