Chapel Hill is a walking town. During my first year at UNC, I complained almost everyday about the daunting trek from south campus to main campus. My sophomore year, I lived minutes away from Greenlaw Hall where most of my classes are. This summer I’m in Carrboro and in the fall, I’ll be in an apartment down MLK. So I’ll be back to walking. And no, I won’t be doing George Michael Bluth’s sad Charlie Brown walk from Arrested Development. I’m happy to report, after two years of walking around Chapel Hill, I’ve come to love it. More importantly, I choose a long walk anywhere over a bus ride almost every time.
There is no glamorizing the south campus struggle stroll, but I want to say it did condition me to walk anywhere. The public transportation options are wonderful here, but you miss so much when you’re sitting on the bus. Walking around campus literally forces you to stop and smell the roses, to actually look at your fellow pedestrians and to appreciate Chapel Hill’s abundant beauty. Without my walk every day in my first year from south campus, how would I have found the beautiful Genome Science path? Of course, it’s easy to remember things fondly when you don’t experience them as often, but walking from south campus was actually a wonderful fate to have.
I’ve fallen in love with Chapel Hill because I’ve walked around it at different points of the day. Have you ever wandered home around 3 a.m. when the sprinklers are on and there’s no one else awake (at least, you can’t see them)? The Olde Campus Lower Quad community never looked more beautiful, I can assure you. I walked home the night after the “tornado” came in February and the wind was out of control; there was something magical about the way campus looked when it was being blown about. I love taking walks through the arboretum and upper campus near sunset. UNC at dusk makes me feel like the whole world is exists here. When Franklin Street is full of people, I feel like I’m standing right in Chapel Hill’s chest. Under the lights of the Varsity, I feel like I’m being squeezed in its heart.
All of these euphoric feelings I’ve mentioned are hard to come by, and some of which I’ve never felt before becoming a part of Chapel Hill’s ecosystem. And the way I’ve come to feel at home here at UNC is by walking throughout campus and trying to take it in as much as possible. One of the most wonderful feelings is realizing suddenly, “This is my life.” I had that moment when I was walking home from work one night, on a route that had become routine for me. So take a walk around town and really try to soak it all in; this is all of our lives, even when we just pass each other on the way to class.
