Imagine seeing a quarter that’s been dropped in freshly fallen snow. Imagine the ease and the feeling of triumph with which that quarter becomes yours. Another day’s worth of ramen noodles.
Imagine now another quarter in the snow by another student’s path. Imagine thousands of students walking on that snow, trampling it to ice. Imagine the frostbite and the aching heart of the student whose fingers fail to pierce the quarter’s new glacial armor. This student shan’t afford any ramen.
Now, imagine at last that the fresh snow is soil, the students are grass, their fingers are roots, and the unwitted glacial armor is the new-formed rock that means the grass can’t get to any quarters, or rather, to any air, water or food.
(See what I did there? Allegory. That means it’s true. Soil is about 50 percent nothing, through which plants can reach to get food and drink. Compacted soil lacks that nothing, so the plants starve, asphyxiate, wither and die. Got it? Good.)
You, hurried trampler, are the agent of compaction. Conceit is thy name! Imagine how much of natural life and beauty is lost to the unyielding student sole each day. How can you live with yourself? Whence this spirit of venality and vainglory?
O Zion, let not thy haste and impatience cause the fall of grassy nations. Quench not the furnaces of Oz with their emerald blades unforged. Walk thou henceforth on the fetching sidewalks, O Israel, and find no evil in the extra seconds spent thereon. For verily, they are few.
Hearken, BYUsalem. Feed the students. Spare the grass. Preserve the landscape. Tread the concrete.
JARED KORTH
Sandy
