To the Goucher College Woods:

If you’re here, meandering or sprinting or sleeping amidst these trees, hopefully you find the same sense of calm, the same sense of respite, the same sense of connection I found here, everyday, for four years.

I still come back, once every few years, tracing my fingers over the Heart Trees, feeling my legs tense up at the sight of Rocking Chair Hill, sensing myself calm down seeing the waves of buttercups laughing and bobbing in the breeze of the Back Jump Field.

***

The night after I graduated, I found myself lying in said field of buttercups with three friends and a smuggled bottle of wine, attempting to squint our eyes and see into our very blurry futures.  

In case you were wondering, wine fortune telling does not work out nearly as well as you would hope:

You still feel some kind of existential anxt. You still wonder if that guy you’ve been talking to will actually text you back. And at the end of it all, you still wind up staring into the bottom of your glass or cup or mug or whatever you’ve been drinking out of wondering:

HOW WILL MY LIFE END UP? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW???

***

In the years since that fateful post-grad falling-into-a-field-of-flowers night, I’m happy to report that these wonderings still happen.

You will still wonder how your life will play out. Who will be there. Where you will rest your head. 

Because let me let you in on a little secret:

In the end, the daily runs through the woods and the hours-long Stimson Sits and the futile attempts at studying in the Ath and the late nights hovering in the hallways of the T and the memories upon memories upon memories in and around these woods– they will all turn out ok.

Everything will turn out ok.

As they used to say back in the ancient days of Goucher,

“Transcend boundaries.”

And I will leave you with,

“YOU, YOU SPARKLY HUMAN YOU, ARE A BAMF.

Even if you don’t know it yet.”

❤ , 

One of the Tall Runner Girls from the Class of 2014