Outdoor Observations #3

  Whenever I remember that twilight exists, it becomes my favorite time of the day all over again. I often get upset myself when I’m inside and then go outside to find that it has gotten dark. I feel like I have wasted the most important part of the day. One time during a block break in Leadville, Colorado, my friend Isaac and I went for a walk at sunset, and he commented on how he had read something about how watching the sunset every day is good for your mental health because it makes you feel anchored. After thinking about this for a while, I thought about how the routines in your life really make you who you are. The music I listen to, the environments I spend time in, the people I interact with, the food and drinks I consume, etc. Kimmerer’s writing of routines reminded me of this feeling, and I have been trying to embrace it more lately. I realize that I spent a lot of this year trying not to be alone when maybe that would have been valuable for me. Like right now, I’m sitting in a part of campus that I kept meaning to make it out to this year, but I never took the time to be myself and just go there. I’m really glad I got to have a couple of minutes here and ground myself as the year ends. It’s this part of campus between the JLK and El Diente apartments that is covered with flora and is often ignored by CC students, but I walk past it often and make a mental note of it every time. My goal for next year is to spend more time outside, whether by myself or with others. The moments of just sitting alone and watching nature happen are more valuable than I’ve ever realized. I would like to end this reflection with some lyrics to a song I like to listen to when I’m outside:


“When your eyes became focused on absence

How the shadows were cast on the plain

Under moonlight of middle November

I was shifting to stay in the frame


Oh, and I would eat from the tops of your branches

Spit it out, break a bow, and descend

I would dream of the ways we'd get cradled

While this lullaby rings in my head


When this began

This was a thing

That we could both share”


  • The Hotelier, Goodness Pt. 1

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