By Dan Hagen
 |
| Old Main photo by Janice Hunt |
Crossing with the pedestrian light at 4th and
Lincoln this morning, I was nearly run down. And yes, my last sight would have
been the one I have been expecting to see for a decade now — a wide-eyed woman
behind a windshield, talking on her goddamned cell phone. I gave her a good
scowl and took a mindful breath, determined to let the sight of the campus
relax me.
Walking to my campus office in the early morning over a
holiday break, moving alone across that stately vastness utterly emptied of
people, is an experience that seems symbolic of something existential, a mute question for which I have no answer. The only movement is the gamboling of
squirrels, the only sound birdsong and the occasional rich, welcome toll of a bell tower.
I’d liken it to the opening of some Stephen King novel, but
the feeling is friendlier and weightier than that. It’s like an abandoned park
where children once played long into the dusk, or some afterthought of an
afterlife.
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