It’s dusk — that purple-blue-black sky that envelops Gambier in the autumn when the leaves turn their vibrant orange and start to fall. It’s my sophomore year at Kenyon and I’m relishing the crisp walk from Chalmers Library back to Watson Hall.
It’s far too early, I decide, to call it a night and retire to my dorm room. I take in the darkening skies as the sun sets over the horizon. I walk past the Watson Hall front entrance toward the round picnic table across the turf and spot an empty hammock — a canvas of magenta and orange, firmly secured between two pines — that calls to me.
After wiping away the fallen pine needles and sap droplets, I rest my backpack against one of the adjoining tree trunks and sink into the hammock, letting its nylon-polyester blend support my frame. I gaze at the right side of Watson, at the lights from inside glowing from behind shades and student-brought curtains.
It’s quiet, save for the rustling of tree branches and the echoes of students walking into their North Campus Apartments across the street. It has been a long day of classes — philosophy, Russian, and voice — that have wrestled me outside of my major. I lean back into the hammock as it hugs and swings me from three feet off the ground.
I swing for a few moments, pushing against the balls of my feet to feel a breeze against my face. I feel carefree, and it hits me that if I let it, college can be this weightless moment — a four-year period of growth and self-reflection. My time in the hammock does not end when I wriggle myself out of the fabric’s folds or when my sneakered feet hit the grass below. Of course, there are moments when the ground feels a little nearer — like during a physics test or a writing workshop — but the support of faculty, staff and friends motivates me to pump my legs in and out; to continue swinging, writing and studying.
I coax myself up from my reclined position and slide my backpack onto my shoulders. As I pick my way across the grass near the back of Watson Hall, the warm air welcomes me inside. The sky darkens further while the street lamps shine softly along paths in the evening. I know that this night will appear again — either in the literal sense of my body swinging gently in the hammock, or in the form of study groups in Chalmers or watching Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” in London at the Globe Theatre as a part of the Kenyon-Exeter Program abroad.
While I want the work I do and the bonds I build to have weight, I can support these goals in the way that this hammock supports me: by staying secure and building momentum with a small push.