The Eureka! Moment

Sorry for the lack of blogging as of late.  I’m sure some of you have now concluded that I have moved on and will stop this web log so appropriately entitled “Minor Musings”.  However, I apologetically inform you that you have not heard the last of me and that I will indeed write more on my comings, goings, and experiences while in college. 

It has dawned on me that this is the first blog that I have written where my description of the whole blog is not a lie.  I am now genuinely a transplant and I am a college student at the great Eureka College.  Move in day was exciting and sad and memorable and… you can fill in the blank.

My family caravanned across the country to get all the way to the great green north known as Illinois.  We left Friday in the morning and arrived in Bloomington in the night.  The following morning was The Day, and my father wanted to go across the street from our hotel to pick up a soda pop before we made the last leg of my journey to college.  As we crossed the busy road we came upon a bridge and as we were going on, we were over a creek. 

The creek bed was shallow but very wide.  The grass surrounding it was lush, green, and full.  Roughly three fifths of the bed was dry and made of small river stones and pebbles, the remaining forty percent was water moving so slow the eye could barely perceive movement.  In the water was a fattened raccoon.  For those who may not know, coons are extremely important to my family.  Whether I like the animal or not is rather irrelevant as I will always appreciate the influence raccoons, and more specifically Coon Hunting, has had on my family.  My father is an avid coon hunter and quite good at it, but as it was important to him it became part of my life and I enjoy seeing coons frolic as it represents that link to the past.

In my mind, I knew that this was the moment.  When I would look back on my move in day, that specific time I gained gobs of freedom and started breaking the childhood ties, I would think of this moment.  When I looked out on a bit of untouched nature in such a large city and saw a creature simply being…it was a powerful sight and the deeper part of me understood this.  However, the normal side of me only understood that the deep side was telling it to pay attention.  There were no further details to pick up. 

So now I have come to realize what I was told then.  It was a special time, carved out of a hectic period that I was able to share with Dad on that bridge.  We got to see the raccoon scurry away, farther down the creek and slowly disappear as he moved away into the water and vegetation.  Maybe there is a stronger symbolism here, and I may just see it, but until I see more of the picture, all I can concretely comprehend is that it was a golden moment.