As the Earth’s axis shifts our beloved northern hemisphere once again closer to the sun, bringing spring and its sunnier skies, humanity seeks out the sun’s warmth, aka, people are spending much more time on the Low Steps.  

From my Broadway-facing Reid window, I can see the Low Steps and consider myself uniquely qualified to speak on the behavioral tendencies of Columbia students spending time there. Admittedly, I am observing from around a hundred yards away from between two buildings, but I’m able to make note of large-scale trends nonetheless. Every look out the window feels like a 45 second ethnography proving how badly seasonal depression takes us out, and how miraculous 20 minutes in the sun can be. 

On sunny days, I wake up to see a generally sparse group populating the steps, and I sometimes imagine some of them go every morning to sip on a cup of coffee, meditate, or observe the early morning goings-on of campus. Those who go in the earlier morning (by early I mean like 9-10 a.m.) now are often solitary, or in groups of two, but as the day goes on, larger groups make their way over to eat, read, and socialize. 

Once people start swarming the steps like beetles in the early afternoon, a comically apparent groupthink emerges. People migrate to avoid shadow and the clear line between sun and shadow becomes a barrier between the inhabited and uninhabited territory of the steps. The commonality of people looking for the sun is at once scary and charming. The swarm of students huddles in the last crevices of warmth. We’re all so much the same. Why does this make me existential?

Later in the day, as the sun shrinks back behind the cityscape, I can see people putting their jackets back on from a distance. I know from experience that everyone’s now trying to pretend they’re having a better time than they are, that the air is warmer and much less windy, because by that point they(I)’ve committed to being there and need it to be worthwhile. We commit to having fun whether we like it or not.

Once the sun is set and the steps are less populated, those who are there retreat to the top of the steps, out of my frame of view. I can still watch groups walking across, maybe a few stop to greet Alma or sit and have what I imagine to be wildly serious conversations about the PrezBo replacement shortlist or a plan to halt climate change in its tracks. Someone by themself stands and stretches their arms above their head.  I see someone light a cigarette. The world is so many things at once.

Image via Bwog Archives