From the instant our weekly journal assignments were described in class, there wasn’t a moment of hesitation or thought spent on where I was going to choose to devote about an hour a week to sit, reflect, connect, and write. This is rare, for usually, the decision making process that goes on in my brain requires agonizing hours of overthinking, pacing in circles, and frantic phone calls. I smiled to myself thinking, wow, this deserves a celebration. On Tuesday morning in this class full of new and familiar faces, I think of My Spot. Yes, I have claimed my possession of a log. A log that was once a tree that fell from turbulent winds or maybe on its own, exhausted from standing tall for so long that it wanted to serve another purpose; creating a walkway across a silent creek, connecting land to land. I am sitting in Alison Hall, just a floor above a classroom that I had taken my MCAT less that a week ago, on my last first day of my undergraduate career.  As someone who feels emotions with every single working cell in my body, reminiscing on these past three years requires a tightly fastened seatbelt. To put it simply, I’ve cried a lot. Tears caused by a wide-ranging emotional spectrum. My Spot has been my stability, and this opportunity to get to know it better, understand it, and form a deeper relationship with it got me excited for the semester ahead.

The Monday of Labor Day, after getting home from a long day at the beach, I decided to pay a visit, this time with a notebook and pen. I remember my first time walking through White Clay in the afternoon of a stunning fall day in November of freshman year, a day I remember with color and richness. I was on a date with a boy from my residents’ hall during a time where I thought the University of Delaware was a place where I couldn’t fit in or find home. Although we remained just friends, I am forever thankful that he introduced me to the park. We walked past the tennis and basketball courts behind the dorms on North Campus and became engulfed in clusters of green, brown, red and orange leaves with blue skies peeking between branches. I am pretty sure I even vocalized, “Are we in Narnia?” At 6:30pm almost three years later, the fierce sun was lower in the sky approaching the horizon, and the green was vibrant and overpowering. Strolling down the familiar path where I’ve taken long runs and hikes with friends, I make a right by the “Closed No Entry” sign, stepping over a divider and crunching over some fallen leaves to stand in front of a red brick building. The building is old, crumbly, beaten down, and clearly abandoned. There is graffiti on its screwed shut wooden doors and windows. There is tall and untamed grass etching up the sides of the structure and spider webs stitched in between branches of the bushes that surround it. The house looks like a scene out of a horror film where you yell at the television for the protagonist to get out before something jumps out at them. Just like the characters in the films, I don’t listen and proceed to walk around to the back of the house.

I remember freshman year standing here with my date, afraid, wanting to go back on the trail and away from this creepy looking haunted house but he persisted in us exploring. Retracing our steps, I duck and hop over limbs and shrubs until I see the creek, and right there as it was my freshman year, the thick roots of the fallen tree removed from the earth with its trunk stretching over to the other side of the stagnant river. With my chaotic and always in motion lifestyle, this log is grounding and sobering. The way the water stays stationary and static causes me to become immobile, fearing even my slightest exhale would cause it to ripple. And the log, so stable, so strong and balanced, invites me to climb up and sit dangling my feet off each side. I kept the promise I made to myself that November day that this was going to be my place of peace and meditation when needed.

I try to make myself as still as possible, blending in with the silence and trying to become aware of the sounds and details of a place I know so well, but imagining I was Aldo Leopold seeing it for the first time. I notice how the log seems more sunken into the earth, and that the bark is chipping off like paint. If I look at the water long enough, I can make out little bubbles coming from what ever is underneath the murkiness. I wonder what kind of tree is the one that I sit on, which has supported me through periods of growth and decay. I wonder what other life that surrounds it and feeds off it also.

Through this spot I found my home at college. To spend this time learning and observing will be my way of saying thank you.