Student's Choice
December 1st
I was thinking about Communitas of trails. How everyone is
an equal and how cool it would be to experience something like that. Until I
finally realized I had, even though my experience was brief. Communitas is by
definition, a Latin noun commonly referring to an unstructured community in
which people are equal. When I moved into college this summer I experienced
this for Welcome week. We were all freshman, scared of not fitting in at
college. We had let our homes. Our accomplishments meant nothing now. What did
it matter your GPA in high school? That was the past and frankly we were all at
the same place. It was a clean slate. The first day or two were absolutely
terrifying. Then I meet the people around me. These people are vastly different
and despite the fact that we were randomly assigned the same hall, I might
never have known or liked them. We bonded in a unique way because we had this
experience of being equal and alone together. Both trail hikers and college
freshman have this experience in common. This is why people make such strong
bonds on the Appalachian trail because they are in a unique space where
accomplishments of the past don’t matter and on some level they are terrified. Whether
they were terrified of dying or being alone, I’m not sure. I have never walked
the trail. However, I do feel I can relate to the hikers in the trail journals
better now. They are/were starting a new adventure and I know what that’s like.
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