Each step I take brings me higher. Each step I take brings me more fear. Each step I take grants me more freedom. Higher, higher, higher I climb until there is nowhere farther to go. Wind blows at me as if I were scaling a tree though I am surrounded by concrete and pavement. I imagine I am climbing one of the trees I can see in the distance amidst the grass. Not spring’s rich green grass, but winter’s sad grass that even though is not gray is a bit browner than green. I can no longer see the gray that brought me here, but I know it’s just a bit beyond the grass, helping others cross and enter this mini patch of nature. My hands grip the ropes as tightly as they can and my feet, I hope, will not sway off the rope below me. If I look immediately down, which I try not to do, I see the playground’s caramel brown mulch.

Directly across from me stands Lily, who appears fearless, laughing as she watches the water. She grasps the ropes tightly and begins to lean back, trusting that her arms will keep her from falling. She tells me about the river and how it meets the sky so gracefully. Oceans, rivers, and seas. I have always thought of them as wild. Forces to be reckoned with. The unknown exists under the blue. When a toe dips in the home of the seaweed, a mystery begins. Like Lily, the water does as it pleases, emitting joy by doing so. Bravery exists there. Just like a wave, Lily begins bouncing her feet up and down, making the thin rope quiver, inciting chaos through the whole structure. The ripples reach me, and through my pleas for Lily to stop, laughter sneaks out. Some of Lily’s boldness must have reached me through the ropes. She tells me she’ll only stop jumping if I trust my arms and lean back as well. 

So, hands gripped, arms tight, and feet steady, I lean. I tilt my head back to look, ready for my beautiful view. Only my view is not the same as Lily’s. I can see the sky, which is colorless, meeting the gray of the bridge, which later will take me home. No joy from this scene. I keep leaning and look farther. Closer to me, closer to the ground, I find the trees. I am not the water. I like the realm of the known, the predictable. I like the trees. They reliably change throughout the year. Stable forces standing tall and keeping guard. Slowly and solidly, I pull myself back to stand on the ropes, more aware of my own stability. Lily begins jumping again. This time, I laugh as I wobble. I laugh until she finishes jumping and we return to the ground and walk.   

We walk on a strip of concrete that splits and separates the grass, toward what Lily had just been admiring. Concrete melts into gray rocks speckled with white and black that line the water. Here we sit. We stop moving. Lily is not bouncing. I am not laughing. On the rocks, we sit facing the water. When you look at the water in the wrong conditions, it looks tired and dirty. When the sun is out, though, as it is now, the blue, which seems to have been washed in purple, bounces the sun back to the viewer. The bright part of the water is so illuminated that it is colorless, making the water seem as if it is almost holding magic. The only sound to be heard is the wind, which spirals in gentle circles around us. This wind carries different air than the air we breathe at school. This air washes our faces with salt. Lily and I stay in silence, letting the wind and the water do the talking. We have swapped the whispers in the libraries for the whistle of the wind and the water.

I am not doing my reading about the sea and Poseidon’s rule over it, but I am sitting by the water. A blue haze washes over Lily, connecting her that much more to the glimmering water. The glimmer that contains a mystical ability to remind us that all our problems simply do not matter. The world is so much bigger than us. The water and the trees matter in a way that the details of our lives will never. My alarm rings—it is time to return to campus—so we begin our walk back.

Our chatter returns until we reach the bridge, a concrete monstrosity. The bridge that acts as a divide between Brown and India Point Park. The bridge that either will be welcoming into the realm of nature or that will be returning you back to the concrete world. Now, on the bridge, when I look down, I don’t see grass or water or even trees, but I only see gray, black, and white. If I close my eyes, listen, and imagine where I am, no voices, no birds, no silence, just a roar, I would think I was in the middle of a storm with wind lashing at me, swirling chaos into the air. But the true storm isn’t wind; it’s cars. The true storm is below. It is rushing underneath, speeding with purpose. Where are they all going? To where the ocean used to lick the ground? To where a forest once stood? To their jobs where they must wear suits? To just get back in the car tomorrow. Do these people crave the park as well? Do they open their car doors and look for nature? 

Lily and I have left the doors that kept us inside all day, only to turn back to the bridge to cross it once more and join the cars. Until we return, Lily will have to take on the responsibility of acting as the ocean, and I will be a tree. 

Maisie Molot is in her first year at Brown. She is studying English and can be found in her free time with her film camera or crocheting stuffed animals.