The sky is always on fire here.
Our second week into winter break was spent in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a place which soon became a second home. That stream of five days came as close to perfection as anything can come in this world. We were young—18 and 19 years old. We spent mornings in the kitchen eating smoked-cheese scrambled eggs, drove past beautifully-worn barns, orchard trees bare of fruit, and horses enclosed in white picket fences all in the afternoon, lounged in couch-chairs watching late-night comedy shows until midnight. Weaving through one-lane bridges and open-field encompassed roads, we stopped at a river on the side of the street—a metal, horizontal staircase in the distance leading the way toward a look-out point. Little did we realize a carved path (which turned out to be a much easier route) was five feet away from our chosen pathway. He struck thorned branches away from my face with sticks, held my hand step by step. We reached the river in no time, waves of water lapping over stones at our feet. My world was on fire then, like the sky of Gettysburg every night since college began. It was all aflame.
New Year’s Eve carried us to town square—couples bundled up in scarves and in new coats from Christmas morning. Though the evening air was clouded with smoke and the music was mediocre in the least, there held a certain feeling of fresh beginnings, of hope for the coming year, of love. I never felt so safe then in that moment. The countdown started from ten and ended with a burst of fireworks above buildings in the square. What looked like golden rain came falling in peppered rays, gliding across, it would seem, an entire countryside. It happened in a matter of seconds, one year lapsing into the next, my hand still grasped in his. Our sky was on fire for twenty minutes into the New Year—the finale a sudden explosion of one firework after another. I locked my eyes with his own, the last of the flames fading into what became one of the most memorable nights of my life.
The sky is always on fire here: reds fuse with oranges just above the tree line, enveloping a world that I only discovered months ago. The New Year came with a rush of howling wind, ended with midnight kisses, continued with a walk around campus, the cupola beautifully lit as usual, and concluded once more with a pleasant feeling of belonging. I realized that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else: the summer ending with the start of my education here at Gettysburg College and the New Year commencing in the same place.
The sky is always on fire here and so is my world at Gettysburg College.