Late one night, just before summer term started, a friend and I randomly went for a walk.
Climbing the hill at one end of the golf course, we settled on a spot overlooking the valley. The night fog had already set in, obscuring the ground into a misty conglomeration of trees and hills. The distant stars of the Milky Way sparkled clearly in the rural night sky.
"It's beautiful," my friend breathed. Following a moment's hesitation, he laid himself down in the damp grass. Echoing the comment, I settled down beside him.
Somehow, the shelter of darkness encouraged conversation. Personal memories flooded back: of home, of experiences, of dreams faded and of possibilities not yet realized. Where was it all going? I wondered.
Lapsing into silence, I looked up again at the million points of light flickering above.
The dew on the ground seeped through my shirt and I shivered.
We were just tiny specks in a world much greater than us, and yet somehow, surrounded by the awesome natural beauty, I felt content. Things seemed to make sense. Just for a moment, time appeared to stand still.
Faint streaks of sun announced the arrival of another day, and we eventually found our way home.
The whirlwind of Dartmouth soon took over: the excitement of summer, returning friends, the classes we realized we still had to take, the committee meetings and appointments and dinner engagements scrawled in the Day-by-Day. The quiet memory of that evening faded and life went on.
Now, with Sophomore summer more than half gone, I have begun to wonder what I will take away from it.
Last spring, all of my '94 and '95 friends kept telling me that sophomore summer would be "one of the best summers of my life."
And yet amidst the fun of Tubestock, rope swinging and barbecues, the reality of life after graduation seems to loom ever closer in the distance.
When this summer is over, what will I remember? What has made the most lasting impression?
I can not help but think that the rare moments, like that night on the golf course, will be among the things I someday treasure most from this place.
The few frozen seconds in time that we all experience and yet cannot quite describe in words. Those times that, for lack of a more sophisticated allusion, one of my friends nicknamed "moments of greatness."
More than all the academic and career successes, more than the disappointments and heartbreaks, even more than the fun weekends and crazy stories, these tiny sparks of understanding are what I will remember vividly, not only from sophomore summer, but from my whole Dartmouth experience.
They remind me why we spend so much time pursuing everything else. Why it is worth taking risks. Why it is worth getting hurt sometimes. Why we are even here.
Indeed I have come to believe, they are much of what college, and life, is all about.
