Wild Bunnies and Stone Bears

This afternoon I cut through a little used corner of the UCSD campus.  It was after 5 pm in the last week of summer school, and there were only a few people along the way.  Jasmine scented the air.  I chose the path lined with magnolias and azaleas, just so I could smell the delicate, subtle sweet scents of my childhood in Louisiana—so familiar that the first time I almost missed them.  Then I passed through a glass doorway in a shallow hall that connects buildings, and along a sidewalk alongside the back of the building.  Shrubs blocked my view as I circled a small rise for about 10 feet, and then I came to a grassy knoll.  Three brown bunnies formed a perfect triangle on the grass, nibbling away, until I startled them.  They sat up, ears alert for my movements.  Their backs have an orangish-colored fur; their ears are tall and white on the inside.  I told them I bring love and peace, but one bolted for a far bush anyway.  The others started eating again, and I quietly walked on.

That’s one of the best surprises about my new life.  I see wild bunnies almost every day.  They graze on the hills around the college, and I usually see them every morning walking to the office and most evenings too.  But I had never seen them on this hill before, and it was so quiet and secluded, and they were so wide out in the open that it was startling.  On the hills where I usually see them, they stay close to the shrubbery and are camouflaged by the grass and bushes.  I have to look for them.  This time, I couldn’t miss them.

I was returning from spending time at one of the sculptures on campus—a huge stone teddy bear, placed right in a triangle of grass between the engineering buildings—all glass and metal and high-tech new buildings that exude wealth and science.  Huge granite boulders—8 of them—piled on one another to look just like a giant cuddly teddy bear.  Makes you want to hug it—or be hugged by it—and definitely climb all over it—and run around it and play peek-a-boo.  Students have been known to hang a flower lei on it and a tie.  I asked how they got up there, and one of my colleagues shrugged and said, “They’re engineering students.”  A tribe of Native Americans in the area—the Pala—donated their sacred stones for the sculpture.  The stones are beautiful.  Just to be around them feels good.  Certain angles where the rocks meet one another reminded me of Elephant Rocks in Missouri and Enchanted Rock in Texas.  It’s like a miniature, man-made version of a wonder of nature.  And it’s a bear.

UCSD is not a cuddly campus.  It’s huge and sprawling and disconnected, with no real center, no architectural cohesion, no clear flow, and lots of little isolated worlds.  But it has stone teddy bears and wild bunnies, magnolias and azaleas, and the air smells sweet all the time.