Let's be honest: The last week sucked in many ways. Women's rush, resume drop deadlines, nighttime temperatures below 40 degrees it's been a lot to handle. And I don't mean to get all contemplative again, but I think everyone (except '16s: No offense, but those Writing 5 papers don't make the cut on that list) needs a moment to breathe. Breathe! I say. Don't sprint to an available basement for harbor at 4 p.m. the day you finish your obligations, though that's cool sometimes. But sit for a moment. Look at your life, look at your choices, look at the wall. It's hard to think at Dartmouth. Which is obviously ironic. But between classes, teams, clubs, resumes and Greek houses, there is little time to think about yourself, about your decisions and their consequences, about your future or even to not think at all when this other crap is dominating your cranium. So this week, I sought the rumored Hanover meditation garden.
If you walk down School Street, past Panarchy and the end of the sidewalk, you'll find the perfect place to simply be. If you follow the little wooden "Welcome" sign and take the stone steps you'll find yourself in the LiGroben Family Meditation Garden. It's a less mainstream version of Nathan's Garden, if you will, and you're probably not going to run into cutesy Dartmouth couples on cutesy picnic dates, if that kind of thing grinds your gears. Sit on the bench and watch the ducks floating on the Connecticut. Rake the Zen garden if you can locate the rake (last Sunday morning, I could not). Sit in the shed, and read "The Speak O' the Garden," a notebook left for visitors to record their thoughts and creative impulses.
The garden is not totally isolated a house sits just through the trees, and there's a well-traveled path along the river bank just below, but it's still far away enough from campus.
When you open up "The Speak O' the Garden," you're no longer alone. You're reading people's thoughts, prayers and streams of consciousness. One person was "STONED." Another, with bubbly, girlish handwriting, visited the garden with her boyfriend on their four-month anniversary. "I love this boy with all my heart. This place makes me think about my life and future to come and all I want to do is spend it with this kid." Young love!
You know that feeling you sometimes get that everyone at Dartmouth is happier and better at everything than you are? Those creeping tendrils of inadequacy that come right after you hand in a paper or listen to someone else in your class give a presentation or when your friends go out till 3 a.m. the night before and get their work done the next day? When you get this feeling, take a walk or sit in a garden. Repair the little tears in your sense of self that this school sometimes creates.
Go to the meditation garden and read the notebook. You'll find others who also needed to get away from something, even just for a few moments.
I don't care for meditating in the traditional "count your breaths," "imagine your happy place" sense. But I love the quiet places at Dartmouth: the solitary ticking of the Sanborn clock; the Green early in the morning. You notice more when you're alone. Find your quiet places.
Writing about the meditation garden feels like an exploitation of a special place for my self-serving, bucket-listing needs, but I'm hoping few besides my parents read this column, and fewer still will seek the garden. I'd like to go back at sunset.
If you have any ideas for the bucket list, please blitz Lauren at vespoli@dartmouth.edu.
