In the quad
October 26th 2002, 1211 hours
Location: computer cluster, third floor, Davis Library
Weather: quiet and cool

These things I understand: trees and earth and grass, the sweet scent of pine chips and compost in the worn fields. The wide sky, the slanting morning light, the shuffle of wind in the leaves. Birds winging past my head, chipmunks and squirrels playing around me, autumn leaves and acorns underfoot. To walk beneath the maples is to be in a shallow carpet of the reddest gold. Crack go the acorns as I squash them beneath my feet, one after another, feeling my soles bouncing as they give way. The squirrels compete with me for them, gnawing away with a passion; the chipmunks just stuff them in their cheeks, and dash off to wherever it is they go. And every now and then, here and there, a chitter, a cry, a song.

Yes, these things I understand: dew and grass shavings on my boots in the morning, pinecones rolling along as I kick them down the paths, clean brown soil that doesn't crust on my soles. The redness of berries, the final yellow flowers of fall, the deep green of holly, the bristling of pine. What a world this is, this land of oak and maple, beech and elm, ash and magnolia and spruce. The air is so different from that back home, heavy and stinging like sackcloth; that is a wilder world, and has perhaps always been, heady with the smell of sap and tangled vines. Here things are just a little more discreet.

And no people; at least, fewer than usual, on this quiet little Saturday morning. Occasionally a stroller or two on the old brick paths, getting around from here to there; carpenters and painters leaning out of windows sometimes, and an elderly couple or two, but that's all. The kind of morning on which you'd find earnest girls writing in their journals. Over in the courtyard by the Pit people are strolling, feeding their toddlers, watching the morning go by.

I love mornings like these. There's always peace to be found here, amid the trees and the grass, and though the sun's somewhat uncertain today I don't really mind. Who needs the city, with all that concrete and steel everywhere, all the noise and litter and graffiti? Who needs the incessant honking and grumble of cars, the everlasting rhubarb of the crowd, the huge signs and towers which eat up all the sky? I could live without it, if I only had this. It's so pleasant here, away from the humans thronging and yelling and hitting each other, so full of the clamour of their own voices that they shout and interrupt and cackle without ceasing, not hearing the sounds of the space and the silence. Oh, if only they were gone.

But there are always other humans, though few and far between: people who can hear and listen and understand. They are the people who built this place, a place for people like themselves to be quiet in, to be mindful and enjoy the world which still plays host to them. People worked with that world to build this place, not crushing it to master and rule, but working together with it to create a place of beauty, a place where tranquillity can still be encountered. They are there still, though often hidden, the people who know what beauty is, who understand love and courage and generosity, who are buoyed by the mystery and the depth of all being. They are the reason why I carry on, that hundred and forty-four thousand. They are the ones who give me a reason to believe, the ones who give me hope that everything's not lost for our wretched, wretched race. Are those few men and women of understanding worth all the horrors the rest of humanity has wrought? Is that remnant worth the continued existence of the majority of our species?

Maybe - such a tenuous maybe, but there's still a chance! - maybe they actually are.