My forests are made of pine trees. The trails that meander through the Rocky Mountains are made of dry, packed dirt and littered with soft pine needles.
My flatlands are crisp and empty. Yellow-grey grasses rattle in the breeze, made dry by the persistent sun day in and day out.
Back home, it does not rain enough to make giants of our trees. Back home, the leafiest greens are the bushes that rabbits and deer find unpalatable.
Massachusetts is lush. I didn’t realize how much so until I was staring out the car window on move in day, biting my lip and promising myself I would not cry.
My parents and I were taking a final lap together, moseying around behind campus and then back up to the quad before our goodbye. My dad drove, light amusement in his eyes. Mom and I were clinging to one another in the back, studying the forest slipping past us instead of looking at each other and bursting into tears. The thin road was crowded on both sides by leafy well wishers, waving me on my way even as my eyes filled up with tears and turned their branches into blurs.
And then we were back and I was standing before a grand archway of trees, walking on my own for the first time in a long time. I held my mother tight and did not want to let go. I dried my eyes on my father's shoulder and let him dry his on mine. We gave tear drenched chuckles and promised to call as the broad leaves brushed the tops of our heads.
The strange summer film that hovered over orientation was a blur of walking under trees, sitting under trees, and staring at trees out of windows.
Here, at the very end, summer glimmered like an emerald necklace, green and bold and eye catching. Sunlight was dappled and soft and laughter jumped from branch to branch and swung luxuriously over our heads. To talk was to find passion and the bright, hot, unbearably humid sun glowed through everything.
Where the Colorado plains would be empty, Wellesley bursts with vibrant, inescapable life.
I find myself barley adjusted to the sudden rain humid air, and even more enamored with the vegetation they engender. I catch myself staring out of my window instead of writing, staring at the swaying dance of the oaks in a five minute torrential down pour.
I know already that even as I become accustomed to the jungle of Wellesley it will shift with the seasons. The leaves will catch fire and burn vermilion and crimson in the autumn sun and branches will shimmer silver in the frigid winter moonlight and I will have to learn to catch my breath every day.
Wellesley is an oasis for women who have trod through many a desert to find it, a wilderness cut so that when the light catches it best you can hear the women sing or the bells ring.
Every class is a hike through new forest, every introduction is bird song trilling in the breeze, and every moment is a perfectly cut gem, fastened tightly only to those who love it most.
