In his book Travels with Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck writes, “In long-range planning for a trip, I think there is a private conviction that it won’t happen.” So it seemed on the final day of the semester to students anxious to go home.

We had gone to sleep hearing again the University president’s exhortations to consult parents before leaving and seeing again satellite images of an approaching ice storm. We awoke to a campus shrouded in ice and strewn with fallen branches. Cars drove slowly, pedestrians walked cautiously, and Public Safety rushed about self-importantly to the soundtrack of sirens. We went to our last finals, went to chapel, listened to more entreaties to stay on campus until the roads cleared tomorrow, disregarded them, and left campus after chapel’s final “amen.”

Most of us left, that is, except for John Barnett and me. The day before John had been quite adamant that nothing would stop him from leaving but had the prudence and filial piety to take his parents’ suggestion that he wait until Friday morning to drive home. I had to stay because my flight didn’t leave until the next morning. In one sense, we were stuck; in another, we had a final chance at an adventure.

Finals were over, friends were gone, plans were upset—we were going nowhere and taking our time. John and I took his car and traveled to downtown Greenville in search of a coffee shop with WiFi. It turned out to be difficult enough to find a coffee shop with electricity. It’s hard to know where one is supposed to go, so we drove around Greenville for three hours (but who was keeping track of time?), wandering through residential neighborhoods scattered with ice encrusted branches that dwarfed the minivans and through business districts with dark traffic lights. Some people care about the journey; others care about the destination; we didn’t really care about either.

John and I stopped at a restaurant, ordered soup and sandwiches, surfed the Internet, talked, remembered the sandwiches and ate them, felt sad, told stories, laughed, and talked some more. About what? All the things that seem important to twenty-somethings in the transition that is like a passing note to a beautiful chord. Nothing I care to repeat here; nothing that I would have let most people listen in; nothing that most people would even consider significant. It was simply the conversation of friends, both fearful of an uncertain and uncontrollable future, both optimistic because the future is certain and controlled.

Maybe what I’ve written doesn’t make any sense; it is probably just the foolish musings of youth. But that night was a fitting end to this semester. I have a feeling that sometime later, when the snow again falls like a million parachutes, I’ll remember that night even if it seems like ages ago. I wonder what I’ll think about it…