This summer was a very interesting one by many standards. I was again at Washington College for an internship studying the persistence of Helicobacter pylori in drinking water. At the beginning of the summer I spent a lot of time at my old high school (QACHS) for Driver�s Ed, which put me in close contact with some of my old teachers and a good friend and mentor. She was able to give me a lot of good perspective on my life at the time, and the experience as a whole gave me a removed look at high school life and what people my actual age or a little younger are doing. Quite frankly, I was a little frightened by that, but that is another story. For the internship I was at WC for ten weeks right in the middle of the summer, and I stayed at one of the cottages on campus mainly to get away from home as much as possible. There were some people on campus that I knew, but fewer than last summer, and therefore far fewer than I am used to having on campus. I still had some contact with my parents and occasionally visits from friends in the area, but the majority of my time was spent alone. Both my second Freshman semester and the following summer were the most alone I had ever been at that point, both times with a single, but still with friends around. However, this summer gave a new meaning to the word alone. Not only was I here with fewer people than ever before, but I didn�t know them as well and I didn�t have time to get to know them better. This is fortunate in the sense that it gave me a lot of time to think about things and get parts of my life in order that were somewhat disorganized at the time � which is something that I not only miss, but could seriously use right now � but I was still lonely for much of the time.

I managed to fill this vacuum with a variety of distractions. I have always been particularly attached to video games, and this summer was a prime time for game time. However, there is only so much time one can devote slaving away to an electronic taskmaster without honestly rotting one�s brain (your parents weren�t kidding!). Further, after long enough hours spent playing alone in a dark room, it just loses its charm. Chestertown is a very nice place to walk around in the evenings when there is enough breeze to keep of the swarms of bloodthirsty West Nile-carrying mosquitoes, and eventually I started to do just that. It was in this calming method of taking up my time that I eventually found solitude, for my travels led me eventually to the Lelia Hynson Pavilion near the boathouse. In the nice evening sea breeze or in the more rambunctious winds before a storm, the pavilion is an incredibly nice place to sit and enjoy the evening while contemplating one�s life, situation, and surroundings. I even managed to compose a haiku once while biding my time there, and it rather embodies the gist of my discourse:

sunset, reeds whisper
soothing phrases; loneliness
becomes solitude

In these daily pilgrimages to the waterfront, often all alone, I felt less lonely than I did at almost any other time this summer. I don�t know if it was the beauty of the view I was treated to when I timed my walks properly with the sunset or if it was just the action of getting out of my room and outdoors, but it seemed to work wonders on any loneliness I felt. I can�t say that I found nirvana or felt at one with the world, but I did feel much happier about being left mostly to myself, and it became much easier to think about some of the problems and issues I contemplated by day. I have never felt quite as strongly the difference between loneliness and solitude as I did sitting on that deck, and I am sorry that I will rarely be able to do the same again, first because of the weather during most of the year, and then because I doubt I will spend next summer here. However, when I occasionally feel lonely at the dorm, or when I wish I had someone to just be around, I can think back to that time and place and feel better.