I wrote in my previous post abut my late night walks across campus. These used to freak out my friends and roommates. I used to hear things like, "Aren't you afraid of being attacked?" "Raped." "Mugged" Fill in the blanks I heard it all.

At 1 and 2 am on campus I never saw another person walking. Never.

More importantly I was never afraid. UMaine was a big campus, around a mile square, an well lit in most areas. There was something divine about walking it when there was no one else around, no cars and near silence. Just me and the hum of street lights.

My 2nd year my friend and I took Painting 201 together across campus from our campus housing. The studio was in a chemistry building near my old dorm. One night one of the painting students found a woman in the bushes outisde the building raped and beatten. I slowed my late night walks, though the incident occured at dusk. For several weeks I remember feeling pent up, easily aggravated and hyperactive.

In the end a friend of mine and I put vodka in waterbottles walked campus together and got drunk. Giggling in the fresh snow, we made snow angels and wandered to a friends place. We ended up getting a friend to take us skedding* across campus. That night I met up with a guy with a completely tricked out hot rod, with full black leather seats, front and back, and a super cool purple and silver paint job. He was dating a friend ofa friend of a friend. The guy with the hot rod ended up taking people skedding. I distinctly remember giggling hilariously as I slid back and forth around the back seat and bouncing off my friends.

I never lived in fear, that came later, with age and moving to the city. City life fills me with fear and anxiety in such a way that life in the woods does not. It's interesting, when I first moved here I dind't feel fear. I continued much of my same behavior. My friend Sarah and I used to wander Boston late at night, blue and pink haired idiots.** We'd wander her and there, to the park, ride the T. Sometimes in silence and sometimes having intense conversations about art and life. Many of my friends thought I was dating Sarah, but she's like a sibling to me, a little sister I never had. Today we don't see each other often enough and I miss her, and our conversations. But those memories of our fearless walks of Boston and Cambridge warm my heart.

*Skedding is a delightfully dangerous and illegal activity in which one moron convinces another moron, usually of the red neck variety to tie a snow sled to the back of a four-wheel drive pick up truck and drive at dangerously fast speeds in freshly fallen snow, usually across well cared for lawns.

**When I moved here I went through a phase of variously colored hair. My hair was orange, white, pink, blue green and black. None of it my natural shade and all of it very short.