Campus Magic

13-12-4
Why the college campus where I attended school is magical, in terms of weather conditions.

Today I found myself walking north into 25mph winds from the north, with a fine snow falling in a sideways-into-your-eyes direction. Underfoot was a nice shoe high drift of powdery white snow to slosh through. Though I only walked a block to get to the bus shelter, I ran the last little ways to avoid what I was sure was freezing to death. Once in the shelter every little crack in the structure seemed to bite me with the wind whistling through. I stood on the bench to keep my feet thawed, the shelter does not reach all the way to the ground. The bus finally came and I was saved. Unfortunatelly it would leave me three whole blocks from my destination, a journey I was not looking forward to given my past one block treck. The bus stopped less than ten minutes later, and I cautiously steped out into the snowy world again. To my surprise and delight, the snow was falling in a mostly straight down direction now. The breeze was gentle, and instead of my walk being a stretched out repeat of my previous treck, it was a stroll through the winter wonderland of a snowglobe. Those three blocks were all that I love about winter, the quiet snow muted sounds, the sparkling sky and ground, the brisk not too cold temperature, and the crunch under my boots. As I walked I wondered at the change. I had started to the north of the college campus, and north of that is mostly business places selling food to hungry college students. I found my winter wonderland to the south of campus, so now I had all the twisting streets and big buildings sitting around in not so straight lines between me and there. I knew that buildings are great at blocking out weather conditions, but I was walking about three car lengths away from most of the buildings, and expected the wind would have whistled around or over the college campus and darted straight down at me again. But it didn't. After I thought about it a bit I realized that is probably why I never thought the blizards were bad when I was a freshman there. I lived on campus, and in the heart of those protective buildings it was no trouble at all to get to my classes, which I often did before finding they were cancled for a blizzard. This is what made me decide that college campuses similar to the one I attended, and other such groupings of buildings close together and not built along straight roads, are quite magical. They can tame the weather and allow those who wander among them to enjoy the outdoors away from the wind that plagues us all in this area. Explain it with science all you want, laugh and say you knew that a long time ago, I don't really mind. Because someone has to take the time to notice the little magical things in life once in a while.