Almost every university has its symbol. It is pleasant when you hear about something and a bright and warm association is arousing in your mind. When people hear about Arizona State University, the first thing that leaps into their mind is Palm Walk. We have been so lucky to see this beauty with our own eyes! A person who has seen Palm Walk will never forget it. It is hardly possible to describe your feelings when you have a walk along this marvelous pedestrian mall for the first time. It is like magic; it is like being in another universe. Palm Walk sends inspiration, it is like the home of Muses and your soul wants to sing. Palm Walk needs attention, if you want to be inspired by it, you should devote some time to it. It seems that the palms have a secret. To learn this secret, one should not hurry; he/she should listen to the beauty of Palm Walk. In this essay, we will try to show how we have tried to learn the secret of Palm Walk.
If you want to learn a secret, you should be as attentive as possible. Let us go along Palm Walk from the Student Recreation Complex to the University Bridge and listen to the palms, to the wind, to the air. We hope that it is possible to hear them speaking if you just want to hear them very much. Palm Walk is not so crowded now, it is very surprising and it plays into our hands. People are not so interesting right now, the palms are important, they are our company now. At first glance, they are motionless and quiet. Standing like gloomy fairy-tale giants, seventy feet tall trees seem detached and even arrogant. They are so tall; they are closer to the sky than we are. It seems that they despise people because we are so short and fussy. For the palms, our haste seems silly, unimportant, and prosaic. It can be compared to a situation when you see an ant, a tiny uninteresting creature that is always in a hurry. In a minute you will forget about this small insect as if it had never existed.
Still, if you look at the palms more attentively, the situation is different: palms are talking to one another and they are talking to us as well, but the problem is that a human being has forgotten how to listen and talk to nature. A man is arrogant, palms are not! It seems that they have livened up when they saw that someone was finally interested in them, they started to talk. The light wind helped them to talk, though it was not a windy day. A light breeze was flying among the crowns of the palms; it was like a flying messenger, it reminded us of the Greek God, Hermes, with his winged sandals. The palms’ crowns were moving, the trees were whispering something and the breeze was carrying their whisper. We heard a breath of wind; it said that palms were happy to be among people, they loved people as they were their only family. The palms’ messenger, the breeze, told us about the birth of the oldest palms, “the veterans” of Palm Walk that were planted in 1916. They were like the sages, long-livers among trees. They have never moved from the place where they were planted but they have known so many things, so many secrets of humans. This was what the tricky wind told us about the palms.
We stopped looking around and looked ahead. What we saw was the corridor with the palms on both sides. We suddenly understood how symbolic this Palm Walk was: it was the corridor. Every corridor leads somewhere, this one leads to knowledge. On the one hand, the palms on both sides are students just like we are, they belong to campus, they have always been here. It seems that they have absorbed great amount of knowledge through the pores on their trucks. On the other hand, they are like professors, they are a natural part of Arizona State University, they are the oldest residents, and on the whole, they are the masters here.
It suddenly started raining. It was not raining hard, it was just a shower. Still, we did not want to find a shelter, we were enchanted by the palms. Raindrops were pattering, the palm leaves seemed to talk louder and louder. They were talking about people, about palms’ love for people. They were offended by people’s indifference, the palms wanted to show us that they were alive, they were our friends. It is really so, if you come up to a palm on Palm Walk and put your hand on its trunk, you will feel that the energy of the Earth. The energy of the tree is entering your body and your soul. The palms can help you relax; green lawns and other trees are the part of real nature. They can feed us with natural power, the energy of the Earth. These motionless inhabitants of Arizona State University are our relatives and are strangers at the same time, but they, definitely, want to help us to relax and recreate. When it was raining, the palm told us that they lived to serve people. They told us about the past; about the time when a man and nature were friends and relatives. It was long before a man decided to deforest the Earth and to cover it with a shell of concrete and stone. The story of the palms was so moving, it seemed that they were crying and mourning the loss of their friends. We suddenly wanted to promise the palms that we would never harm nature.
It stopped raining and the clouds dispersed. Students, faculty, and staff appeared on Palm Walk again. The anthill of Arizona State University returned to life. We decided to watch the people and the way they behaved on Palm Walk. It was obvious that most of them paid no attention to the beauty that surrounded them. They were hurrying somewhere; they were discussing their tasks and plans. Some were arguing, some were just chattering, some people were just alone and absorbed in their thoughts. We felt a burning desire to tell all those people about the beauty that surrounded them, about the palms, the wind that was alive. An awful feeling said us that those people were missing something important in their lives. Still, some people like us were not hurrying anywhere, they looked at the palms, looked in the sky, and they were smiling. We understood why those people were smiling, they were talking to the palms, and the palms were eagerly telling them a story about the time when people and trees were their closest friends. We understood that that was the day when the palms opened their secret to us.
That walk along the Palm Walk was an unusual one; it was like a trip to another universe, it was like meeting unknown friendly creatures. Now we know that Palm Walk is not a mere pedestrian mall, it is a rare oasis in a human high-tech society. The palms have prompted us that it is necessary to restore such oases everywhere; they will unite people with nature again. We have promised the palms that we will always hear them, that we will always love them.