Searching for Beauty
I cross-country skied last winter for the first time in years. My friend Maura did not rush me when I insisted on edging my way to the middle of a hill before skiing down the rest of the way, or when I paused to absorb the warm mid-afternoon sun slanting through the tall pines along the river. Maura stopped on one trail and yelled, "This is why I came to Dartmouth!" and I knew exactly what she meant. I too had been attracted to Dartmouth by its setting. But it was only in my last year there that I truly appreciated what had first drawn me.
"It's beautiful," I had answered repeatedly after friends and family asked me why I had chosen Dartmouth. The summer before freshman year, I had brought a friend to Hanover to show off my new campus. We had gone hiking, and I had envisioned making many such expeditions during the next four years.
When I got to Dartmouth, though, instead of searching for beauty, I searched for the comfort and safety I had felt in my old life, the life where I could talk with my best friend for hours without a pause and where I could walk blindfolded through my house and not bump into a single chair. When I came to Dartmouth, I settled for environments ronments that made me feel safe, that came to feel familiar, like stale dorm parties and my own room.
Still other obstacles interfered in particular, time. The D-Plan had its advantages. I finished a class in ten weeks I had gotten bored with after six. I explored ten countries during a term abroad, and got a taste of broadcast journalism at CNN during an off term. But the D-Plan also made me feel so rushed that I had to designate every hour in my day planner.
The summer before my last year, I learned to slow down. In August, shortly after my twenty-first birthday, I lost partial feeling in both my hands and face. I was so scared I couldn't sleep for a week. One night I crawled into bed with my parents. Our family doctor and a neurologist both mentioned the possibility of multiple sclerosis. But an MRI proved benign. The condition, probably stress-related, soon disappeared. My dad admitted it had been the worst week of his life. And I realized that my time on this planet is uncertain.
When I came back to campus that fall, I gave myself time to discover what makes me most happy taking classes in which I can be creative, being outdoors with friends. That winter, I crosscountry skied many times. When the temperature warmed, I jogged through the wooded neighborhoods around Hanover.
After graduation, I left everything that seemed comfortable and familiar and set off to work for a newspaper in a small town nestled in the mountains of upstate New York. In summer the woods and lake shores here are home to miles of walking trails. In the winter those trails are filled with cross-country skiing tracks. I have already pictured myself setting off on the first snowy day to search for beauty in these woods. This time, I will not wait four years to find it.
