Thick/ Thin Description

Shooting Star Savanna

There is a semi-circular stone bench surrounded by trees that then lead into a ravine. The sky is blue and the weather is finally warm, at least when the air is still. The grass in the middle where the bench sits is matted down. Tall yellow flowers, probably weeds, encompass the cold bench. Some of them are missing petals. The electrical posts are conspicuously covered with some sort of protective green metal. The back of the brick Johnson Science building is still visible through the trees. No mountains surround the Shooting Star Savanna. There are a few dead leaves that have fallen in the middle of the circle and they look crunchy. The weeds in this area are numerous. One tree towers over all the rest. It has grown random and crazy with branches reaching out in every direction. It’s covered in leaves that are a deep green color. Small insects keep buzzing around me. Then they disappear. I can still hear them though. I can hear birds chirping. The air smells fresh. Backpacks and shoes smash the grass down beneath them. Sunlight hits the grass in certain places, like little light circles all over the ground.


It is funny how this small piece of nature was preserved over another one. The Shooting Star Savanna is not particularly beautiful. Weeds encompass the stone bench as bugs creep around it. I am not one to say what is beautiful and what is not since one’s conception of beauty differs from one person to another. Some may think that mountains are beautiful and majestic, while another may find the Shooting Star Savanna beautiful in all its unpredictability. Nothing is uniform here. The flowers with their missing petals don’t blend with the enormous trees. The back of the Johnson Science building does not flow easily into the ravine. It hardly feels like nature out here since the sounds of the weed-eaters and lawn mowers are quite clear. There was an attempt to make a visitor to the savanna feel as if they were immersed in nature by trying to ineffectively hide the electrical equipment with the green metal. The smashed down grass indicates that humans have ventured over here, maybe some college student’s attempt to feel like they belong somewhere. Feelings that when you are in nature and away from other human beings you somehow feel as if you belong. The brown leaves on the ground look like the type that when you close your hand around them dissolve into dust. Its hard to think about how in just a few more weeks these tall trees will start to lose their leaves, the smashed grass will turn shades of brown, the bugs will disappear, and the sounds of the birds will cease. Snow will start to fall and the back of Johnson will be entirely visible. To escape into nature in the winter has always proven to be quite difficult.

Dorm Room

The bed in my room is so close to the ceiling. It is so close that when I get into bed I can hardly sit up all. A large window is in front of me, offering a view of the big Lake Forest house. It is late afternoon. The blinds allow little slivers of light to spill throughout the tiny space. White, blue, red, and yellow prayer flags frame the window. Scarves and purses little the white walls. One of the plastic hooks has fallen off the wall. An array of scarves and belts lay on the blue linoleum floor. Plastic boxes upon boxes are stacked to the ceiling. One contains thick, winter coats while another is filled to the top with shoes for all seasons. There is a slick black refrigerator covered in Buffalo Sabres season calendar magnets and underneath those are menus to a variety of restaurants. On top of the refrigerator is another plastic storage container followed with a shiny black T.V.
Books and notebooks from previous years are scattered throughout the room. Some are placed neatly on the window sill. Others are heaped on top of the armoire while the remaining ones are loaded on top of the desk. The computer is warm and sounds almost like someone is breathing when the fan turns on. The computer screen is covered with a slide show of pictures of mountains and of girls with glassy eyes grinning at the camera.

My dorm room is both my work space and my living space, though sometimes I get the two confused. The black T.V. is on when I should be reading for classes and the computer is usually stuck on Facebook and J. Crew when I should be typing papers. Sometimes the books and the notebooks stay closed on Saturday nights when I am long gone from my tiny space. At times though, my room becomes an extremely productive space. The T.V. stays off and the computer screen is covered with Microsoft word.
It’s hard to call this tiny space home even though whenever I walk in the door I always heave a sigh of relief. I leave my anxieties over classes, friends, and family the moment I enter. The scarves and purses and belts are all in their respective places. The boxes are perfectly stacked sky high. Things are in the right place and despite anything else going on anywhere else on campus I feel peaceful here. As I lay down in my bed that is only about three feet from the ceiling it seems like this space that I call home is truly where I feel most at ease.