I love standing on top of Memorial Hill, looking off at the view. Coming from the relative flat of Minneapolis, it’s refreshing to see rolling hills and a landscape that carries on into the distance. The only way to see this much of the world back home is to scale a skyscraper. Most houses don’t even reach above the tree line, so being able to step outside and look down off a hill is a welcome change of pace. There are no mountains back home either, and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of the way they frame the horizon here. Their peaks and plateaus rising just far enough above the trees to draw the eyes’ gaze.
It was while watching a sunset color these mountains that a friend of mine asked a question that has stuck with me ever since. “What skylines,” he wondered, “have been important in your life?” I don’t think I answered at the time, other than maybe saying “this one.” I don’t think I knew how. It’s a simple question, at first glance, but as I went to answer I realized that it was much deeper than I first thought.
On its face, the question is about where you are from and where you have been. It aims at discovering the names of the places you have seen, and so the basic response is just a list: Minneapolis, Amherst, Hong Kong. But that’s not really what the question is getting at. It’s asking you to think about the connections you’ve made with different places. The emotions they evoke. The perspectives from which you saw those skylines and the ways you took advantage of them. As someone who has always been fascinated by our relation to place, it has revealed itself to be a perfect question.
It’s not just the Minneapolis skyline that’s important, but the Minneapolis skyline viewed across a lake as the sun rose the morning after high school graduation. While I listened to Blessings by Chance the Rapper. The second one. With Raury, Ty Dolla $ign, and, most importantly, Anderson .Paak.
It’s the Holyoke Range viewed from Memorial Hill at 7:30 in the morning, with frost coating the grass and fog obscuring all but the highest peaks. While I silently gave thanks for making it through another 6:00 am lift.
It’s Hong Kong viewed at midnight from the top of Victoria Peak as I reunited with a brother from halfway across the world.
It’s all of these places and many more. It’s ultimately a sense of wonder – that indelible feeling that I find myself constantly searching for, but never knowing where I’ll find. The skylines that give me wonder, those are the important ones.
This realization answers the question in one way, but it also doesn’t. In fact, this one answer gives way to more questions and more uncertainty. In this way, the question is fundamentally unanswerable. More can always be said. More can always be learned about yourself, and those around you.
As I’ve spent more time at Amherst, I’ve learned that this very unanswerability makes the question so perfect. If it had an easy answer, it would be forgettable. If it simply asked for specific facts, like a list of cities, it would be quickly left behind. But instead it is something that grows in the mind. It has wormed its way inside my brain and always leaves me learning more. More about myself and more about those around me. The more I think about it, the less sure I am of my answer. And that, I think, is its true beauty.
I’m much less sure of this blog post than I was at the start, so I think it’s the perfect time to ask you: what skylines have been important in your life?
