Thick Description - Respite in a Quiet Garden

Now and again, nostalgia bids me to return to those fond places from my past. I revisit a pastoral garden, where on countless nights I secretly eluded the monotonous sprawl, seeking solace in the kind comfort of solitude. Here I sit upon a lonely bench beneath the streaming lamplight and ruminate on the bleak yesterday, when gladness broke daily from fast clinging hands and forsook me to an unquiet mind. Bitter was the time when I felt most alone whilst surrounded by friends, and to find seclusion became my most desperate desire. Nightly, I escaped across the footbridge into the hush of the cold night air, which greeted me like a warm blanket.

I wish I could honestly say my life got easier, but it did not. I simply learned to cope by wearing a smiling façade and subduing my urge to wince and flee. My nightly excursions through the peaceful garden gradually became less frequent until they eventually ceased entirely. Yet I still dream of such liberation from the chains of responsibility, and tonight I make my pilgrimage back to my place of carefree hiatus.

Enshrouded by the still darkness, I drink in the sweet, soothing sounds of serenity. The pulsing chirps of crickets mingle with the moaning whistle of a distant train. A hushed river hurriedly whispers beside me. The hum of the nearby freeway reminds me of the bustling commotion to which I must inevitably return. But for now, I close my eyes and am swept away from this dreary sphere to the world of imagination, where I am truly the master of my fate. The weight of expectations slackens on my exhausted shoulders, and I embrace the quiescence of the night. But time evades my eager grasp, and I must soon conclude my hour of respite. I reluctantly follow the path across the footbridge and to my home. Yet my heart remains upon the bench sitting lonely in that quiet garden.

Artist's Statement

My thick description briefly discusses the environmental factors that contributed to my need to escape. Like most incoming students, I experienced particular difficulty adjusting to my new surroundings during my freshman year at Brigham Young. My once flourishing extroversion seemed to halt suddenly when I was abruptly thrust into a new place without any preexisting friends. As such, I inadvertently began imposing further isolation upon myself by taking long, nightly walks alone, which is how I stumbled across this garden by the Provo River on the West side of town. In my solitude, I felt clarity of heart and mind, but I eventually realized that these bouts of escapism only exacerbated my loneliness, so I finally ended them. But I often remember that sweet boredom and the golden time spent alone, and returning to the garden this week was quite cathartic.

I have always loved the power and beauty of the written word. The assigned article entitled “Seeing,” by Annie Dillard, enthralled me with its simple, yet eloquent and moving imagery. I love Dillard’s writing because she notices beauty in and ascribes meaning to seemingly ordinary instances, a talent I often seek to cultivate as I observe the world around me. But as she explores the concept of ‘seeing’ she makes an important distinction between sensation and perception: we see only what we expect. My perception of the garden in my description, for example, differs vastly from that of others, who might find the same location commonplace and insignificant. The beauty of a thing lies in the eye of the beholder. Furthermore, the value and meaning of a piece of art varies from one viewer to the next. In the words of French surrealist painter Marcel Duchamp, “the viewer completes the artwork.”

Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden, helped inspire my depiction of the connection I share with the garden. In the book, Thoreau extensively describes his prolonged immersion in nature and the transcendental spiritual discovery he experiences as a result. He asserts that this union with nature allows one to glimpse the essence of life itself and reveals to one the true nature of one’s character.

In my thick description, I refer to my return to the garden as a “pilgrimage.” I derived this concept from one of my favorite books, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (incidentally another work by Annie Dillard), which is a volume of poetic prose comparable to the stylistic approach I adopted in my passage. The unnamed speaker in the book shares reflection and description as she lingers in the wilderness behind her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She was a pilgrim in the forest because she, like I in my hallowed garden paradise, removed herself from her daily life to visit a place that represented personal spiritual significance. There is beauty in the deliberate return to those places where one has approached transcendence and experienced closeness to the sublime. My pilgrimage to the garden was a truly gratifying experience because of its emotional and spiritual importance to me.