Pennsylvania August

Bernadette Benda

Like a traveler in a medieval story, I stumbled across a monastery, though I did not stop to ask for food and drink for a wretch like me.

It was hot that day. I was protected only by sunglasses and a cheap water bottle from Target that had lived long past its prime. There wasn’t really anywhere to go, and by the time I thought I might be able to walk into town and grab a cold brew, I realized I’d forgotten my wallet, and I was too far to turn back to the dorm.

I had no goal or destination in mind. Just needed to get off campus and with no car, no friends, and no one I knew within four hundred miles, I started walking.

Probably wasn’t very smart. Probably wasn’t very safe. It was highly questionable and much like escaping a prison into the arctic or desert or some other equally inhospitable environment.

But I’m a runner. I get in a car crash and take off my high heels. No idea where I’m going, but ready just in case.

Eighty-four degrees in August. Country roads. No sidewalks, not many houses, not many anything. No one knew where I was, though I may have told my mom I was going for a walk. Not sure if she realized I was walking on the side of the road, through farmlands on hilly backroads with weeds biting my knees and bugs humming me a tune all the while long.

I walked, took turns down different roads. I don’t remember how I decided where to go. I don’t remember looking at Google Maps. I don’t remember being worried. I remember being glad I was walking, despite heat and weeds.

I stopped when I saw the monastery.

Nothing happened when I saw the monastery, just as nothing happened on the walk. I stared at the monastery, a monk sitting on a bench in the distance. I hadn’t known it was there, despite the fact that I was at a Catholic college. I remained there for a while, imagining I stumbled upon some secret. A secret garden, a hidden refuge, a shelter for a hero in a storybook.

Then I walked on, returned to campus, I don’t know how long later, returning with nothing but some sweat and sore muscles.

A few days later I quit and never returned to college.

I think about that walk often. How I was the farthest away from home I’d ever been alone, but it hadn’t felt that way. I think about how nothing happened on that walk, but it remains imprinted on my mind like a tattoo tucked behind my ear, sometimes forgotten, easily unnoticed, no explanation for why it’s there.

Maybe that was the day I turned into an adult, taking my life into my own hands.

Maybe it’s just who I’ve always been. A wanderer, comfortable wherever my feet can take me.

Maybe it’s just the sign that a college campus was never the place for me. I like being out in the world too much.

Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. It was just a walk, and whether I took it or not would not change my life at all. It’s just a memory I open up every once and a while and look at, wondering who that eighteen-year-old girl is, where she is walking, and what she is looking for, wondering if she’ll find that monastery and go up to the door this time.