“I still love you the best, better than all the rest. Better leave in the summer… Indian summer,” sang Jim Morrison in a short, haunting melody.

     It was Indian summer on that warm Saturday afternoon in early October when I decided to wander around the campus of Michigan State University. The trees looked resplendent in their reds and yellows, with some browns mixed in along with the remaining greenery. The bright sunlight filtering through the colorful canopy, the leaves stirring ever so slightly from a soft breeze, lent an enchantment to the setting.

     Only few students were out and about. A couple of them had parents in tow, no doubt showing them the sights. The football team had a bye week. The rest of the students, I supposed, remained in their dormitory rooms, studying for an upcoming assignment or recouping from their Friday-night entertainment, or more likely they had gone shopping at the nearby stores or had returned to their respective hometowns for the weekend.

     I don’t often drive into downtown East Lansing anymore. My regular travels across mid-Michigan take me along I-96, a roadway that skirts the southern edge of the campus. When I do drive westward on Grand River, I usually go no further than Okemos before turning south towards the freeway and the more familiar route that takes me between home and work.

     I needed a book though. Unable to locate it at the store in the Meridian Mall, I drove on, found a parking spot on Albert Street, in front of the house I had lived in for a few months many, many moons ago. Zdan and I had shared the rent for the first-floor flat as each of us made one last, uninspired stab at college life. I deposited enough coins in the meter to avoid a ticket (90 minutes is the maximum allowed) and walked over to the Barnes & Noble complex. After finding what I wanted, a purchase of just under ten dollars, I departed the store and headed across the street to the MSU Union.

     Michigan State University was my stomping grounds for three years after high school graduation. I attended classes year-round until, within a few credits of becoming a senior, having run out of money but more importantly having lost any compelling ambition to continue, I departed. My initial intention was to return and earn the degree, finish the unfinished task. Yet I never did.

     I started out my freshman year as a political science major with an underlying desire to write.  The writing, as I recall, would center on social issues and serve a political cause. When I left, I still harbored a desire to write, but was otherwise drifting. I had switched my major to philosophy, enjoying the introductory courses I had taken. Unfortunately for me, this field of study came under the purview of a Bachelor of Arts degree and required the successful completion of a year of foreign language. I stumbled badly in my Spanish class and decided not to pursue this requirement, thus abandoning any high-minded academic career. A Bachelor of Science degree was more lenient on the matter of a foreign language, so I switched again, this time to Multidisciplinary Social Studies. That major was more to my liking, accommodating the varied mix of classes I had already taken. It was also, I realized even then, heavy on the general overview, but thin on any expertise or specialty necessary to secure a job. I had chosen an easy path.

     It took me awhile after college and more than a few adventures and misadventures to find a place to moor and then a heading to pursue. Journalism and then family have, together, provided responsibility and direction. As luck would have it, the potpourri approach that I had taken while at MSU proved a good backdrop for weekly newspapering.

     After quitting college, my next plan was to visit new places and experience exotic cultures. I had fallen under the spell of the Hemingway short story and the romance of the Lost Generation residing in Paris in the 1920s. The wish to see faraway places is, of course, one that many others, both, young and old, share. I’d hoped that a prowess with the pen would serve as both a means and end to this goal. I’d write about these interesting vistas, and the earnings from those compositions would fund the travels. That’s a strategy many other would-be scribes have tried. A goodly number have actually succeeded.

     Instead of traveling the world, I’ve wandered about Michigan whenever time and opportunity allow. Otherwise, all in all, I haven’t ventured too far geographically from where I started. What has mattered finally, career-wise, is the writing rather than movement; to hopefully have something worthwhile to report on and something purposeful to comment about; to be engaged in this time and place rather than to drift aimlessly about, seeking sensation and stimulation rather than substance.

     The return visits to my alma mater have been spaced out during these ensuing years despite my close proximity. Those times when I have come back, the  visit has usually been spent, as  this most recent excursion was, taking a stroll about the old part of the campus for a couple of hours and mentally reminiscing.

     After leaving the Union building, I walked towards the landmark Beaumont Tower, then on past the Agriculture Building and past Kedzie Hall and Bessey Hall. The latter two were where I attended my first classes in Natural Science and American Thought & Language (ATL). Reaching a sidewalk that borders the Red Cedar River, I took that pathway westward, going underneath the Farm Lane Bridge to that wide expanse of lawn that lies between the Auditorium and the Red Cedar. To the south, across the river, stood Shaw Hall, my home away from home during my stay here.

     Here and there students, alone or in pairs, sat in the grass, reading a book or simply sunbathing. Most of them, I noticed, had earplugs and were, I assume, listening to music as they reveled in the warmth of the day and the serenity of the surroundings. A few joggers went pass me on this stretch of sidewalk; their effort at physical fitness being an appropriate complement to the larger purpose of this university which is to encourage and gratify the curiosity of the mind.

     At age 60, my gray hair giving away any pretense of youth, I felt a tad out-of-place. If any of the youngsters noticed me, or cared enough to even wonder, they might have mistook me for a professor who, like the joggers, was taking advantage of this fine day to get a bit of needed exercise that would keep the muscles in shape. Or, perhaps, an astute one or two might have had me pegged correctly as a former student, one of many who return from time to time.  

    Still, even such a perceptive observer would be too young to notice the faint whiff of a long-ago breeze, one that promised so much. Nor would they notice the path here on these grounds and amid these buildings that once beckoned; that once stretched seemingly far into the horizon and has now shortened considerably. Nor would any of them realize that for this gray-haired chap and others of his generation, the distance is now in retrospect.

     I went past the Alumni Memorial Chapel and then, reaching Bogue Street, went north towards Snyder and Phillips Residential Halls and finally circled back. A new art facility is being erected next to Grand River, a reminder that the needs of tomorrow must be served; that even amid these venerable and hallowed buildings, these classrooms where countless scholars, year after year, decade after decade, have passed through, new students will be arriving and will also traverse these grounds.

     I look for Morrill Hall. The old structure, while looking quite sturdy and durable at first glance, will soon be destined for the wrecking ball. “Close monitoring of the internal wooden structure of the Hall has revealed irreparable deterioration, indicating that the more-than-100-year-old building is approaching the end of its useful life” was the verdict reached by MSU officials that has determined its fate.

     The philosophy department had been housed there when I attended, and I remember going inside to pick up a paper I’d written as part of my final grade. The essay, a comparison between Plato and David Hume, was the only one I saved from my college days.

    Plato, the intellectual giant of ancient Athens who provided the foundation upon which Western thought has risen, famously said that “Objects we observe or otherwise know through our sensory perceptions are merely copies or images of eternal ideas and these ideas (or forms) are the ultimate metaphysical realities and therefore the object of true knowledge.” He also stated that it was through the study of philosophy (i.e. obtaining true knowledge) and the use of logical reasoning that one could understand this eternal, otherwise indiscernible reality of ideal ideas. 

    From Platonism and its offspring Neo-Platonism was derived the philosophy of St.  Augustine and through his writings came several hundred years of accepted Christian theology.

      The latter philosopher, Hume, was a man from 18^th century Scotland. He proved to be the ultimate of philosophical skeptics and attempted to stand metaphysics on its head with his assertion: “I alone exist and the rest of the world is nothing more than a part of my consciousness,” adding that “you cannot be certain something will always happen or exist in the future in the same way it has in the past; you cannot always determine that something will cause an effect.”

     Without such certainly and stability about matter and being, he contended, “we can prove nothing for certain, we can predict nothing, we cannot verify any real truth, even the self is hard to verify.”

     I suppose skepticism is not an altogether imprudent approach to this world and our place in it. Too many people are too certain about too many matters where such absolute conviction is not necessarily evident. The questioning mind, which learning, especially in college, is supposed to celebrate, seems in many instances a more preferable starting point rather than the already-determined answer.  Still, skepticism (that philosophy of uncertainty) is an endless circle of “what if, what if.” At some point life needs that moor to secure itself to and, from there, a course to set your sail and pursue.

     My walk on this afternoon took me back to the MSU Union and then to my car. I put the book on the passenger seat, looking forward to reading it. Like all of the other books I’ve obtained, a fair number of them while attending this university some forty years ago, the contents promise a new adventure.

     My recollections of this place are not only of bygone classes and books. And the return on this day was not simply to revisit the once familiar walkways and buildings. Echoing in that faint breeze, stirring in the gently moving leaves, were all of the memories of long-ago friends, dorm mates,  a couple of  young ladies who for a moment seemed to be the right one, and others who I shared this place and those briefs years.

      Their faces and voices, the laughter and occasional tears, the conservations that filled the hours and our hearts, all of the impending hopes and dreams and longings simmer like a mirage in the far horizon. The long path has taken me too far along; their vividness has faded. Here amid the streaks a yellow sun that filter through the colorful leaves, they seem more the stuff of dreams than once-upon-a-time reality. But in my mind they still reside, are still recalled with affection. They linger on as I do and shall remain until memory disappears; the voices and faces fading away like a wisp of autumn smoke as it ascends upwards towards the heavens. That, I suppose, is not the sentiment of a skeptic.

     There exists a poignancy and bitter sweetness to an Indian summer afternoon. Opulent, almost aching in its beauty, we experience it, soak in the sights and sounds, recall similar moments like this one, yet we know it is fleeting and impermanent. And too compelling, too much the sirens’ call that, if followed, would take us off course. Like long-ago memories, these final moments of a balmy season are soft echoes. For a few moments you savor the splendor, look out at the simmering mirage, but finally the necessity to move on returns.

“Better leave in the summer, Indian summer” and head back to hearth and home, back to the lady who has been and remains the right one. Head back to where the path still beacons, where the breeze of tomorrow still fills the sails, where the unwritten page awaits, and where each new day is another chance to be part of this time and place and to once again “evoke the grave, compulsive word.”