Get thick.

Shooting Star Savannah (THIN)

I sit on a semi-circle of rough-hewn stone.  At its center is a mini-meadow consisting of grass, weeds, and clovers, growing at various lengths in pell-mell formation.  This circle is about ten feet in diameter, with a two-foot opening at one end.  A hundred yards behind me there is a four-story brown building which houses busy science majors.  Directly in front of me there is a gnarled log fallen on its side.  Next to the log there is the base of the tree the log likely once belonged to.  The base is shattered and jagged and rises roughly four feet off the ground.  All around the base, small saplings grow – I count perhaps five, though the tangle of leaves and branches make each individual tree difficult to distinguish.  One of the saplings has grown far taller than the others (ten feet at least), and it has begun growing crooked, starting on the right side of the shattered old tree and shading it on the left.  The base and surrounding saplings are right outside the stone circle, surrounded by yellow flowers.  This field of flowers gives way after twenty feet to the tree line, at which point a forest grows dense enough to obscure any view farther than a hundred feet.

Shooting Star Savannah (THICK)

A short walk from my school's science building, there's a very small meadow, enclosed by a circular bench.  The bench is made of stone, rough hewn like the giant rocks of Stonehenge.  Now, as this stone circle lies in the center of the artificially restored Shooting Star Savannah, I know that some craftsman took great care to make this bench look appropriately rustic, and that it does not, in fact, have this rough hewn quality because it was made centuries ago by pagans with instruments too simple to make its surface smooth.  Still, there is a certain magic in leaving a house of reason and sitting down seconds later in a place that looks like it could have once been a toadstool circle, its power made permanent by pagan stone.  There is even slight evidence of this power:  right outside the circle, there is the shattered base of an ancient tree.  All around the tree, willowy saplings shoot up and shade their fallen ancestor.  This potent reminder of rebirth is made more poetic by the singularity of this scene;  all around the shattered tree and its saplings, there is a field of yellow flowers, and nary another tree in sight until the forest several yards removed.

The Ravine (THIN)

Behind me there is a door labeled "Emergency Exit."  This door belongs to a building named "Deerpath."  All around me are a group of 18-24 year olds smoking tobacco.  I stand on the black asphalt of a service road.  The group of 18-24 year olds do the same.  There is not a car in sight.  In front of me the asphalt ends, there is a curb, and then there is a small patch of grass, perhaps three feet wide, stretching along the side of the road.  The grass is short, ragged, and grows intermittently, leaving circles of gray dust in the areas it does not grow.  Just beyond that, the ravine begins, its borders marked by a forest of various trees.  I do not know the names of most of these trees, but some have rough brown bark, and some are thinner with smooth tan bark.  If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the latter were birch.  All I know about the former is that they are not oak.  Once the ravine begins, the drop-off is quite steep, though it is difficult to tell just how steep, considering how much the view is obscured by all the unnamed trees.  However, peeking through the gaps in the base of the close-up trees, I can see the tops of trees that don't seem very far away, so I can assume that the ravine goes down quite a ways and does so very quickly.

The Ravine (THICK)

I keep my roommate company behind our dorm while he smokes his American Spirits.  He's introducing me to some new friends, and they all rave about the brand.  I smile a little at the irony of a supposedly more healthy brand of cigarette, but my curiosity gets the better of me and I take a puff.  It really does taste smoother, and I blow out a huge billow of the smoke.  The ravine looks dark and uninviting through the smoke.  The trees all grow thick and I wonder if they were this thick when Ferris Bueller pushed Cameron's car into this same ravine twenty years ago.  It couldn't have been, I think, otherwise how could the car have crashed all the way to the bottom of the ravine?  I imagine if Ferris pushed Cameron's car now, it would have just rested nestled on the tops of the branches.  I've had a few to drink, and I'm not remembering the names of everyone being introduced to me, but rather trying to remember the names of the trees in front of me.  I want to say the darker brown ones are oaks, but I know that's not true, because I can picture in my mind what an oak leaf looks like from having to make tracings of them in third grade.  The image makes me smile, and I pass the cigarette.