The other night,  sometime between 7 p.m.-9 p.m., I decided to take a short trip to the organic garden with a bunch of friends. Maybe I needed some time out. Probably I needed a study break from reading assignments and essays.  One thing I knew for sure was that I needed to get out of Middlebury and take a nice walk under a sea of shiny stars. That night, Midd kids were working hard on their last minute assignments, probably cornered somewhere obscured in the library basement. For those of us still learning the ropes around here, last minute assignments tend to be the most challenging task when it comes to completing them in such a short amount of time. (In fact, most of us are aware of that. We need to work on our time management and organization skills!) That said, I had finished all my assignments for the next day, and I thought it was a great idea to take a study break with friends who had also finished their assignments that night.

We met in Adirondack Circle and walked to the organic garden, huddled side by side, and talked about our years at Middlebury College. A friend said, “Remember the time when we went square dancing in our freshman year?” We nodded with smiles. “Remember the time we watched Across the Universe in a friend’s suite and forgot the popcorn was in the microwave- and it burned?” We laughed. “Remember the time we woke up at two in the morning to see the meteor shower?” Memories here and there, carried away by winter winds, and shiny stars in the purple sky sparkled in our very own eyes as we reminisced those forgotten times.

“Let’s create a new memory,” one of my friends suggested. “We should run like children in the fields.” That night, we made believe we entered into a magical kingdom, two gazebos looked like whales sitting in the open fields. The main entrance seemed like an enchanted door to a world of fairies, unicorns, and elves. We put some music on, and danced with each other, humming to the song. Then, we ran in the fields, holding hands like kindergarten children, laughing and screaming, and one of them fell, taking the rest of us in the mud. As soon as we made it back home, covered in mud and grass, socks wet and dry throats, we hugged each other and said “Can’t believe we have less than eighty days till graduation.”

These adventures are worth the time and experience.