I throw my phone to the foot of the bed and glance out my window at the cars rushing through the foggy morning. My friend had been organizing a post-finals hike for weeks, and I had begrudgingly agreed, largely to spend time with her before she left for vacation. However, since she came down with a fever this morning and cancelled, I had been lying here, my phone eating up the hours. I spend so much time either at school or doing schoolwork that in the absence of it, I don’t know what to do with myself if my friends are unavailable. I suppose I could hike alone, my screen-addled brain suggests, and strangely, it seems like a good idea. I grab the bag I packed last night and head to the car.
Guided by my friend’s raspy voice memo, I pull over on the side of a gravel road, at a trailhead solely marked by a wooden sign and one other car. The wind rustles between a few lone trees, perched among muddy grass and lichen-covered rocks. I debate playing music through my headphones, but it feels criminal to block out the sounds of this trail, which winds along the coastline.
When I begin walking, habit forces my thoughts to school. I analyze my performance on my finals, because even though I know it’s fruitless, I stress nonetheless. They feel crucial, like these scores reflect my intelligence and value, though I know those traits aren’t quantifiable as a number on a test.
Thankfully, my mind wanders as I fall into the rhythm of my steps. It is so quiet that the loudest thing I hear is my own breath. A little grey bird flits from branch to branch off to my right. To my left, just over the next rise, I can faintly hear waves crashing against the bluffs. Surprisingly, I’m not bored. Whenever my mind tires, it pivots to a new topic. I try to commit my favorite scenes to memory, because the moment is never captured right when I take a photo. The bird takes flight, the fog drifts astray, or the colors just look wrong.
A new shortcoming occurs to me when I realize that I can describe the colors and shapes of what surrounds me, but that I lack the vocabulary to specify the types of leaves, the species of birds, or the patterns in the rocks. I worry that the details that make this moment memorable will be forgotten if I can’t engrain the specificity in my mind because I’m lacking the words to do so. If words are how we convey ideas, what happens when the words are unknown? Unease begins to replace the calm I was feeling just minutes ago.
I wish that I could say anything else to my friend when I call her tonight, except that the trees were dark green, the ocean was loud, and it was a beautiful day. Describing something only as beautiful feels like erasing the details until all that remains is a blurry aesthetic; I conceptually know it looks good, but I don’t remember why or how I felt in the moment. Am I truly present and experiencing the moment if I can’t perceive it on any level more complex than a vague sketch?
My achievements at school, in sports, and at my job all feel inadequate when I realize that I am standing on the land I’ve lived my whole life adjacent to, and I cannot name the trees that have stood proud against this wind for hundreds of years. It no longer seems to matter that I got a B on that one test because I’ve stepped outside so rarely that a solo three-mile hike felt like a daunting feat.
I draw near to the end of the loop, and the trail leads me to the crest of a bluff. The waves crash beneath me. The deep blue is mostly covered by frothing white as the wind churns water and seaweed alike onto the thin strip of gravel below. The air is crisp with brine and sinks into my lungs with the same weight as the fog dampening my clothes. With each crashing wave, my daily stresses feel less significant, especially when compared to the vastness of the water that stretches towards the horizon.
*****
As I drive back, I pass a small bookshop in an equally small town. A good book sounds like the ideal way to spend winter break, so I park and step inside. The bookstore is the perfect amount dusty, with used books haphazardly stacked on the shelves. I wander towards the back, where a faded navy-blue hardback grabs my attention. The title is printed in neat letters across the spine: A Field Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Point Reyes National Seashore. As I page through it, I realize that this little book could hold the answers to many of my questions from the hike, including a path forward in response to the vast one that is persistent in the back of my mind. I spot a watercolor of the grey bird I noticed, and the trees that were around me: Pseudotsuga menziesii, the Douglas Fir.
Though this was not the genre of book I intended to buy, it suddenly seems to be the perfect way to spend the break. I’ll go on as many hikes as possible and try to identify species in the book while I do. I'll spend time doing something that gives me peace and meaning as a respite from the stress that school and technology build. I’ll work on illustrating my life in detail instead of with the insufficiently broad strokes I experienced today.
As I drive home, I realize that I’ve found a fragment of an identity completely detached from school and the influence of my peers, but something rather uniquely me.
Guided by my friend’s raspy voice memo, I pull over on the side of a gravel road, at a trailhead solely marked by a wooden sign and one other car. The wind rustles between a few lone trees, perched among muddy grass and lichen-covered rocks. I debate playing music through my headphones, but it feels criminal to block out the sounds of this trail, which winds along the coastline.
When I begin walking, habit forces my thoughts to school. I analyze my performance on my finals, because even though I know it’s fruitless, I stress nonetheless. They feel crucial, like these scores reflect my intelligence and value, though I know those traits aren’t quantifiable as a number on a test.
Thankfully, my mind wanders as I fall into the rhythm of my steps. It is so quiet that the loudest thing I hear is my own breath. A little grey bird flits from branch to branch off to my right. To my left, just over the next rise, I can faintly hear waves crashing against the bluffs. Surprisingly, I’m not bored. Whenever my mind tires, it pivots to a new topic. I try to commit my favorite scenes to memory, because the moment is never captured right when I take a photo. The bird takes flight, the fog drifts astray, or the colors just look wrong.
A new shortcoming occurs to me when I realize that I can describe the colors and shapes of what surrounds me, but that I lack the vocabulary to specify the types of leaves, the species of birds, or the patterns in the rocks. I worry that the details that make this moment memorable will be forgotten if I can’t engrain the specificity in my mind because I’m lacking the words to do so. If words are how we convey ideas, what happens when the words are unknown? Unease begins to replace the calm I was feeling just minutes ago.
I wish that I could say anything else to my friend when I call her tonight, except that the trees were dark green, the ocean was loud, and it was a beautiful day. Describing something only as beautiful feels like erasing the details until all that remains is a blurry aesthetic; I conceptually know it looks good, but I don’t remember why or how I felt in the moment. Am I truly present and experiencing the moment if I can’t perceive it on any level more complex than a vague sketch?
My achievements at school, in sports, and at my job all feel inadequate when I realize that I am standing on the land I’ve lived my whole life adjacent to, and I cannot name the trees that have stood proud against this wind for hundreds of years. It no longer seems to matter that I got a B on that one test because I’ve stepped outside so rarely that a solo three-mile hike felt like a daunting feat.
I draw near to the end of the loop, and the trail leads me to the crest of a bluff. The waves crash beneath me. The deep blue is mostly covered by frothing white as the wind churns water and seaweed alike onto the thin strip of gravel below. The air is crisp with brine and sinks into my lungs with the same weight as the fog dampening my clothes. With each crashing wave, my daily stresses feel less significant, especially when compared to the vastness of the water that stretches towards the horizon.
*****
As I drive back, I pass a small bookshop in an equally small town. A good book sounds like the ideal way to spend winter break, so I park and step inside. The bookstore is the perfect amount dusty, with used books haphazardly stacked on the shelves. I wander towards the back, where a faded navy-blue hardback grabs my attention. The title is printed in neat letters across the spine: A Field Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Point Reyes National Seashore. As I page through it, I realize that this little book could hold the answers to many of my questions from the hike, including a path forward in response to the vast one that is persistent in the back of my mind. I spot a watercolor of the grey bird I noticed, and the trees that were around me: Pseudotsuga menziesii, the Douglas Fir.
Though this was not the genre of book I intended to buy, it suddenly seems to be the perfect way to spend the break. I’ll go on as many hikes as possible and try to identify species in the book while I do. I'll spend time doing something that gives me peace and meaning as a respite from the stress that school and technology build. I’ll work on illustrating my life in detail instead of with the insufficiently broad strokes I experienced today.
As I drive home, I realize that I’ve found a fragment of an identity completely detached from school and the influence of my peers, but something rather uniquely me.