Walking Journal #13

PROMPT: It occurs to me that the reason I love walking is because it facilitates thinking. Also, while reading a recent interview I was reminded of a genre of the blues called the walking blues. In the walking blues the singer is alone with his thoughts, usually leaving town, coming back to town, or walking the streets of town looking for answers. This is a roundabout way of saying that this is an open topic journal. Just walk and think and observe. As always, seek and value complexity, ask questions, and remember that there are no simple solutions. Nothing heavy, just tell your reader what's on your mind...

On Saturday night, I took a walk to the football stadium with friends, along with what seemed to be the majority of other students on campus, as well as a good portion of the town. I’m not a huge fan of football, but I love the atmosphere of the games: it’s one event that draws together our entire school for a night, as well as connecting the town to the University. Leaving my dorm, it occurred to me that there were exceptionally more people out walking than normal for a Saturday night, usually people are concentrated in a few areas on weekend nights, but for football games it seems the entire student body storms the campus in a sort of migration to the stadium. Upon arrival at the stadium, the sheer mass of people was extraordinary. It’s incredible how a game can draw so many people to one place: everyone from families of Reno to a few families from my home town in Folsom, to University students: from spirited pom-pom wavers to the casual football fan.

The game itself is never what draws me to football games: my roommate and I met friends at the game, and this aspect is what I go for. The pure social atmosphere of a game is where the real fun happens. Games remind me just how friendly our University is: whoever you sit next to, the chances are that the person will talk to you. The college football atmosphere is much different than my high school games: going to high school games involved sitting with one specific group of friends, either watching the game or socializing, but not really mixing with anyone outside the group. College games are the opposite. It’s easy to make friends with the crowd: there are always the people that are immersed in the game, the ones that yell at the refs when they don't like a call and start cheers against the other team, those that could care less about the game but will talk for hours about what’s going on at the campus, and the casual mix of both.

Football games have a unique ability to pull an entire campus together, uniting against the common enemy. Nevada has a particularly spirited group of fans, giving the games an atmosphere of pure energy and will to win. Unfortunately, this past game we lost, but the way that a simple football game can pull an entire University into the action is a feat more valuable than winning one game.