It’s 5:15 p.m., the sun is just beginning to set and the heavy orange light is hanging in the dewy, brisk evening air. I just tickled the arm of a friend who was filing onto the warm bus as I stepped off it, and I now walk through the campus gardens with that greeting smile still lingering on my face. I passed through the same sunken lawn this morning, and do so every week, but never with this smile, or this firm piece of gum in my teeth or this trash in my hand. Last week, it was raining, and a single sheet of newspaper floated past me in the wind before plastering itself on the wet brick walkway. Today, it was warm and windless. Every day the same path, but no day the same.
As a senior, this route, along with the others I traverse in a school week, have become important to me. Just like everyone else, I developed routine pathways unconsciously over time by simply moving from one class to another and eventually becoming familiar with the most efficient courses. While spending leisure time on campus is a good way to “get to know” your environment, find your favorite spots and get comfortable in the space, I think it is in these quick, unconscious moments of transit that we demonstrate a greater intimacy with our environment.
Paths represent a familiarity with a space that is so deep it becomes unconscious. And because I can trust my body to navigate the familiar, I can allow my mind to notice the new: two birds bathing in a puddle at the border of the sculpture gardens, a freshman eating a sandwich or the way the wind feels.
In fact, it is these old paths that support our memorable, novel and new college moments. My experience at UCLA has been big and full, but somehow it’s these small passing moments, moving from one place to another, that represent all that I love and am going to miss about my time here.
Our routes are proof of our presence in the moment, of our ability to unconsciously come to know a space and develop a routine within it. It is not something we seek; it is a natural product of existing in a space. And when we leave, we’ll have no use for them anymore, but they won’t leave us. Those routes will remain pathways of the mind, backroads of our memory, which we traverse over again when we remember our time here and all the big things that happened after moving from one space to another.
I think about this now as I walk over my familiar path once again, smile still on my face. I’m on my way to the office for a weekly evening meeting and I’m taking the long way. I can’t help but feel greedy for the way I’m scanning the terrain, eyes slowly panning the grassy hill, taking notice of every small feature as the setting sun puts it all on center stage, dressing it in a golden light, making it impossible not to notice. I fumble down Janss Steps, my head over one shoulder, looking back at the white-flowered trees framing the old Powell Library and the people lounging on the vibrant green grass. It’s not enough: once I make it to the bottom, I walk backwards, unwilling to turn away from the scene, soaking it up as if it’s disappearing as quickly as the sun.
I know I’m supposed to be looking ahead, but I can’t stop looking around.
As graduation approaches, I know this is true in more ways than one. For now, however, I want to linger in my path a little longer. I have no interest in looking directly into the sun, but see its light just the same in what it gilds all around me. For the remainder of the sunset, I sit on the patio above Bruin Walk and stare down at the path I just walked once more.
