Coast trip with friends

Katie D.

June 20, 2010 - 2:00 PM

I've just returned from a magical trip to the Oregon coast. My friend Nathan's family rented two houses on the beach and invited our group of college friends to join their extended family for the full weekend. Seven of my group of UO friends traveled out to the coast just south of Lincoln City and spent the weekend watching the waves, reminiscing, creating new memories, and saying goodbyes.

This is a complicated time. Graduation is over-we have officially finished our college years, turned the tassels, collected our diplomas, and toasted our successes. Now we have to pack ourselves off to the next stage. Today I have said or will soon say the last of my goodbyes to my college group of friends. To the eight of us who have been together since the first couple of weeks in the dorms. None of these are forever goodbyes, but they mark the end of an era and the loss of a certain time and place in life. It has been an incredible ride, this undergraduate experience, and I am so glad it closed with this time at the ocean, with space to think and the chance to be reminded again why I love these people so deeply.

The weekend was as perfect as any I have experienced. Nathan's family cooked us fabulous food and were great company, from the cousins our own age to the grandparents anxious to hear stories of our collective college experiences. We ate their homemade ice cream and cornbread (there was other food, perhaps more substantial, but those two items stand out in a particular way for me), and allowed them to pamper us by cleaning the dishes. We walked on the beach together, built bonfires at night, and took pictures. We saw two whales from the shore. We drove to a tide pooling beach and walked through the rocky formations that held pockets of water during the low tide, watching the sea anemones, starfish, and hermit crabs. We ate saltwater taffy and s'mores. We sang songs to guitar accompaniment, in the car, a capella.

It was exactly what we needed: a chance to be outside our normal patterns and preoccupations, to just be with one another.

I almost just wrote the words "one last time." Apparently the weekend has made me a bit melodramatic. I will see all these people again, and I plan to see several within the next month. But they have all moved away from Eugene. I am the last one standing, roots still firmly planted in this small city I love so dearly. Their houses and apartments, which have been a constant background to my life as well as theirs, are now standing empty. The near-daily walks from my home to theirs are over.

All melodrama aside, it will be years before the eight of us are together again. We are scattering across the world as we knew we would: called by our mishmash of passions and talents to travel, teach, begin work, and pursue continued educations. By August we will be living in four cities in Oregon, as well as in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Japan. Our friend Olivia has already gone: she left on Monday morning to start her internship on the east coast. So while I have no doubt that these most important people in my life will certainly see each other again, I also do not expect this to happen for three or four years.

So how appropriate that this set of farewells occurred in this beautiful place by the ocean. We fit so snugly into our roles as friends: the pranksters and practical of us, the laughers and leaders and chatters and readers. We are each so uniquely ourselves, and yet so firmly set within the group as a whole. We lounged by the ocean performing our various roles, singing and reading, drinking wine and naming our favorite memories.

Four years at the University of Oregon over. Ending in this beautiful place. And this next phase is just beginning.