Just after sunset last Friday, I found myself alone on a path bordering the Dartmouth Skiway. On one side of the trail, a house down a steep hill glowed from all sides. Formations of ice covered the cliffside that lined the other and a thin frozen layer coated the ground. As I stood still, I could hear the ice moan and creak; it seemed to come alive when I looked at it for too long, breathing and shifting under my feet. Alone in the dark, it felt like staring a wild animal in the face.
Though the scene was nearly dreamlike, the circumstances that landed me there were nothing short of unremarkable. To spare you most of the boring details, after a few hours of skiing, two friends and I had gone to visit some people that we knew were ice climbing nearby. We had neglected to take off our gear, and predictably my ski boots were no match for the narrow, ice-coated trail. I slid and a rock cut through my ski pants to my leg. Perhaps I was saving myself from further embarrassment, or perhaps I didn’t really care to see the climbers, but I told my friends to keep walking without me.
My phone had no service, so I stood quietly observing the illuminated house, the dripping ice formations and the stars that peaked through the naked trees as an undefined amount of time passed me by. In my waiting, I had recurring, almost inescapable thoughts about the enormity of the natural world. Though I backcountry skied in Iceland, hiked in the Atlas Mountains and have lived in the woods of New Hampshire for three years, I have never once felt so confronted by nature than in that moment when I stupidly slipped on some ice and stood alone on the hillside trail.
There’s a completely different version of this week’s editor’s note that I wrote about Bret Easton Ellis’s novel “Less Than Zero,” which I had read in a day over break. It felt and still feels incredibly relevant to my life, but just for different reasons. On the surface, the story centers on a college student at a liberal arts school in New Hampshire going back west to visit home over winter vacation. After reading, I first planned to write my editor’s note about how I experienced home differently every time I returned from school. But after this moment in the woods, I’m realizing there are parts of the novel that are easy to overlook. Sandwiched between the countless gossipy conversations of sunbaked college students, Ellis reveals a Los Angeles where teenagers are “blinded by the sun,” coyotes cause cars to swerve off the road and the desert turns into a gaping abyss after dark.
Alongside other unnerving scenes, these are the impressions of Los Angeles that stay with the narrator long after he leaves the city. When I first read the novel, I thought about it in relation to the uncanniness I felt after returning home this break. Now, there’s a new consideration — what are the images you’ll be left with when you leave a place, any place of significance? More aptly, what will I remember of Dartmouth? Will I remember the sound of a small stream of water inching down the hill, the roughness of my skin after it met the rock or the dusk light that outlined the mountains?
For our second issue of Mirror this term, our stories span from Hanover to across the globe. One writer highlights the college’s rare orchid collection and another interviews employees at Late Night. If you’re already sick of school, two writers detail experiences outside of Hanover, one reflecting on her off-term in Jackson Hole, Wyo., while the other dives deep into the College’s winterim trips abroad.
