Maddy Case

When I hike in the mountains, my gaze often falls from the summit ahead to the greenery at my feet. Flip through my pictures from a climbing trip in the Wallowas last summer, and among the landscape shots and the smiling group photos you will find several pictures of tiny alpine flowers, my suntanned fingers laid next to them for scale. Cobalt, purple, golden flowers, smaller than my fingernails, nestled close to their low beds of spongy leaves. They are not the showy lupines or elephant’s-head flowers depicted on postcards sold at Wallowa Lake, but they are remarkable. Though snow smothers their crevices for more than half the year, though soil remains scant on the windswept granite, these plants hug close to the rocks and put forth flowers to the alpine sun. I take pictures and step around them. Such efforts do not deserve the stomp of my boot.

I hold a particular affinity for the flowers on the mountainside, like Thoreau’s candid love for the shrub oak, which he called “emblem of my winter condition” (J, 167). In discussing the shrub oak passage, Stephanie asked us what part of nature resonates most with our being and emerges in our writing. Though I described my fondness for the Eastern Oregon desert to the class, I thought also of the little flowers high above that desert. Their persistence, their smiling colors, their soft yet hardy leaves, are the emblem of my summer condition, when my summers take me to wintry places. I think of the first evening of that Wallowas trip: we arrive at base camp in a cold mist, select a tent site by the shore of a lake still half frozen in July, and greet a roiling storm just as we stake down the last corner of our rain fly. We have not eaten dinner yet. I light a sputtering stove under the shelter of a hemlock and cinch the hood of my rain jacket tight as my pasta cooks. With my rain pants on, I can sit directly on the wet ground, so I do. The ice on the lake gleams with silver puddles. The branches of the hemlock quiver in the wind. I grin through the cold rain, happy in this place, even in miserable conditions. In such moments I share the spirit of the mountain flowers.  

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 1

Derek Gideon

Yesterday evening I ventured out to Burgher Hill, a local park about a half hour’s walking distance from my house. It consists of a large hill, formerly farmland, commanding excellent views of the Catskills nearby, the Berkshires off in the East, the villages of Rhinebeck, Red Hook, and Tivoli, the Hudson River, and the bridge to Kingston.

This was the first time I’d climbed to the top in the dark. The curves of the hillside looked like waves of the sea, and when I reached the top I saw I’d made it in time to just see the red blur of the sun, which had just set behind the mountains. It was of course strongest in the west where the sun had just been, then faded as my eye travelled north, following the mountains, which loomed from the dark but eventually faded into blackness.

To the southwest, a crescent moon floated low in the sky above the edge of the red blur, and above it but slightly further south, floated Venus. In their angles to each other they resembled some great cosmic clock, silvery and brilliant. The twinkling lights of the villages lay spread out below. Trees, gnarled and writhing, rose out of the sides of the hill, and in the darkness resembled the arms of ancient trolls.

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 2

Katherine Li

If you’re lucky enough to be in clear water, your surroundings are tinted a faint, glasslike green, threaded with beams of gold light. Looking up, you see the sun playing on the surface, a network of woven fibers of light. Strangely enough, even in the clearest water it is hard to see beyond the surface of the water from beneath. A bubble caught in water glistens silver, like some rare pearl trembling as it is drawn to the surface. And above all, it is barely possible to hear. All sound is muffled, drowned out, as though water can soften the acuteness of the real world, alleviate the burden of earthly problems.

We think of winter as a period of time when all the earth is covered in snow. There is a silencing quality to falling snow. To say it is oppressive would be harsh, but as snow builds up, it seems to mute sound, temper color, and subdue emotions. Vibrancy and vivacity fade. The skies are gray and existence seems surreal and arbitrary. The snow erases the traces of living creatures, the ice freezes the connections between them. All life is lulled to an almost death-like state. There is less to see, hear, feel, and smell –less to absorb from nature.

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 3

Gaku Liu

My sister has an old black rabbit, Twitch, who stays in a cage nearly all his life. When I look into his eyes, I feel sad; it seems to be a terrible fate, and I can’t help feeling that he’s sad, too. I’ve let him out a few times. At first, he sniffs the ground for a while, nibbling on blades of grass, intermittently stopping to stare at me. Then he makes a mad dash—to a large tree in our backyard—and buries himself in the thick tangle of brush that surrounds it. He goes there every time, and while he’s in the brush, he’s untouchable; my sister and my dad have to wait until he sneaks out, then chase him down to put him back in his cage. I, with my smug satisfaction of liberating a caged soul, refuse to join in the chase. At those times, I feel a connection with him—and the distinction between man and beast disappears. I don’t know how much of that connection is returned, but Twitch seems to recognize me; when I visit, he immediately jumps to the cage entrance, perhaps wondering if I bear food or freedom.

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 4

Stephanie Noble

A vein of spiritual introspection runs throughout my journals, sharpened and purified within the bounds of the narrowing pathway. My thoughts have always been light and chaotic—more like a star-sprinkled, meandering brook than a stream of a more steady body. It is easy to respond to the abstract zone of one’s inner self. It is so incredibly easy to speak in the natural language one hears in their own ears rather than with a more discerning tongue. I speak easily; the problem is that I often respond to internal rather than external stimuli.

At first, I found myself drawing back into my mind. Princeton was to be a different experience than the previous eighteen years of my life. I had complete responsibility in all aspects of my personal life and freedom I had only dreamed of having. Coming from a world where I could not attend an event outside my school without expressed permission from my parents to a school official, freedom felt exhilarating. I felt prematurely adult, oblivious to the fact that without some external guidance I had begun to slowly sink into indistinctness.

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 5

Michelle Ripplinger

Right now, huddled in my dorm room at 5:30 p.m., the day has already collapsed into complete darkness—every last ray of light completely gone, sucked away with the cold November sun. And as I sit here letting words slowly leak out of me, I can’t help but think how depressing I find it. Only 5:30 p.m. with hours upon hours of work to complete, yet the outside world has already plunged into a suffocating sleep.

Even still, the thick blackness pressing against my window panes reminds me in the most immediate sense of how Thoreau must have felt—burrowed in his house at Walden Pond, alone, encased in a snowy cocoon. Winter almost seems to necessitate the introspection and self-reflexivity evidenced in Thoreau’s writing during these months. As a born-and-raised Utahn, I’ve experienced my fair share of dreary January days. I can relate. I know the feeling of drudgery and discontent—the sensation that you might eventually lose yourself in the season’s white oblivion and static emptiness. After all, how can our thoughts not be turned inward when the cold, the dark and all the other elements seem to drive us in that direction?

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 6

Caroline Shifke

It is the summer before I start college, and I am on a train from Kutna Hora, a small town in the Czech countryside, to Prague. I stand looking out the open window of the train at the passing scenery. If I let myself stare straight ahead without trying to focus my eyes, the world becomes a whirl of passing colors. Different shades of green flow into yellow or brown and then back to green. An occasional splash of bright pink will suddenly rise up and then stream away. I think of the spin art I loved to do when I was younger. When I try to focus my eyes, I can see the individual trees and plants, but when they remain unfocused, thousands of separate entities become one. I feel like I can reach out and be sucked into the river of colors, that somehow I can become part of this floral stream. Sometimes, I can see individual trees frozen behind the moving colors. It looks like the plants nearest the train have bounded together, creating a shield to protect the earth behind it.

I remember with absolute clarity when the plants opened up to briefly reveal a small clearing. Shafts of filtered light fell gently from between the surrounding trees, making small spotlights on golden grass. A rabbit stood poised in one of these spotlights. The light illuminated several smaller trees which seemed to stretch towards the soft light.

There was something so tender, so beautiful about this small, golden field. For one of the few times in my life, I felt like my brain could just stop. I didn’t have to worry about my anorexic friend I had been traveling with, or the money I owed my other friend back at home. My younger brother’s severely injured ankle and my little sister’s recurring problems with her school friends were far from mind. Instead, I experienced the most wonderful combination of clarity and nothingness. Glimpses of real, absolute truths flitted through my consciousness and flew away before I could grab them. My thoughts wondered from history to beauty to God to philosophy. I followed one thought to the next, without thinking about recording anything or attempting rational order. I felt like I was plucking thoughts from the flow of passing colors, holding them briefly to some overhead light, and then returning them to stream.

When the train stopped, I was jerked out of my reverie. It was like awakening from a dream, when all you retain is a general impression but the entire dream is impossible to recall. I remembered some of my topics of thoughts, but none of my conclusions.

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 7

Dylan Shinzaki

Yesterday afternoon, I shambled back to my dorm after 5 hours of straight class. Pretty good planning on my part to put all my classes on Thursday and Tuesday. I clutched my coat tight against my chest as the sun hid behind the white spires of Whitman. It’s only November, think how much January and February are going to suck.

Thinking of a warm cup of tea, I noticed a maple tree to my right. The dying rays of sunlight poked between Whitman’s towers and illuminated the tree’s crimson leaves as if nature wished to highlight its masterpiece of color. Not quite a tree on fire, but close. The ground crunched as I walked over some low hanging branches.

Like a scientist in a lab, I examined the leaves' fascinating color. Yet another biting breeze roared through and suddenly visions of hot tea reappeared. Yet before I could scurry home, I thought about the tree again. After about 3 minutes of standing here, the twilight air warmed my toes with the beginnings of frostbite and bit at my unprotected ears.

While I plotted my retreat, this maple would be quietly sitting here, standing guard perhaps. All tonight, all tomorrow and the day after that, he’ll be here. Tonight when it gets below freezing, he’ll be here. No jacket, no complaints. I have no idea what it’s like to be a tree. I can’t imagine sitting somewhere for years on end. I can barely stay in class for an hour without getting tired and bored. I can’t comprehend passively letting others cut off my branches and leaves. I can’t understand sitting in the natural cold all night.

Part of this may be evolution. My ancestors evolved in warmer climates. But I also just don’t really understand what it’s like to be a tree. This could be extended to squirrels, flowers, dogs and any other natural object. It makes you realize how deep is the question of “can you have intelligence with the earth?”

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 8

Jake Sniff

My connection with the natural world started at a very young age. As a child, I was very intrigued by the lives of ants. It was both shocking and humbling to think that creatures like ants existed. As I continually explored the fields of my backyard, I came to appreciate the simple lives of many other insects. Within a short time, I had started to collect insects in bug-catchers for later observation in my room. I steadily became obsessed with catching insects. I thoroughly enjoyed being a little Sherlock Holmes – only I traded the magnifying glass for a net. As time progressed, this interest became more sophisticated as I mounted and labeled insects. Within a few years, I had caught over three hundred different species from nine different states. In fact, this hobby meant so much to me that I wrote my admission essays to colleges on my interest in insects. Looking back on this, I realize that this interest meant more than just a connection with the earth; rather, it meant an intelligence with the earth.

For Thoreau, intelligence with the earth helped him define himself in the world. Because of his intelligence with the earth, he is able to find a "oneness" with nature. This intelligence offered him an intuitive means of connection with the laws of nature. For example, he intuitively could predict why and how rivers meander. Further, he also developed an organic means of connection with nature. It was not just that Thoreau connected with nature; rather, it was that nature connected with Thoreau. Thoreau truly believed that he was an integral part of the natural world that surrounded him at Walden Pond.

In a similar manner, insects represented a way of defining myself with the earth. During summers, I often would spend hours outside observing the behaviors of insects. I developed a keen biological sense of what insects were. I often felt like I was a part of their world- the insect kingdom. When I read the famous quote from Thoreau where he states that he is “partly leaves and vegetable mould”, I often felt the same way towards insects.

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 9

Matt Wage

Over fall break I was at the University of Wisconsin working on math with the help of a professor named Ken Ono. We were in a common area where four graduate students were working on math. Another professor came into the room raving about a computer printout he was holding. He had discovered a pattern that he thought was significant. Immediately, the four graduate students offered their opinions as to what this pattern meant. However, Ken said nothing. After about 10 minutes of thinking, the other professor pressured Ken for his opinion, as that was the real reason he had come to the room. With a wrinkled brow, Ken slowly turned and said “I don’t know.” For the rest of the day, Ken thought about the pattern, but never attempted to offer an explanation. I felt like he and the other professor were the only ones in the room smart enough to realize that the answer would probably be complex. It seems that the smarter people are, the more they realize that thing don’t always have an easy explanation.

I think that in general, we’re pretty clueless. One of the best examples is sleep; scientists really don’t know what the deal is with sleep. When I Googled “why do we sleep,” I got a New York Times article that said “it may be the biggest open question in biology.” People spend around one third of their lives sleeping, and we can’t figure out why. This isn’t some little question that we don’t care about. Also,

there must be a good reason because it doesn’t make sense evolutionarily to waste one third of your time on something that isn’t important. So right there, we have a massive part of our lives that we can’t explain.

Yet, almost everyone I meet seems to know the secret to life. They have explanations for everything, like “what is the purpose of life?” However, this seems like a much more difficult question than “what is the purpose of sleep?” In fact, studies have shown that people are generally surer of themselves then they ought to be. Only 2% of high school students think that they are below average in leadership.

Fall 2008 The Greatest Hits 10