Eugene as a Waiting Room: The Ghosts & Gems of Liminality
Eugene is an enigmatic place. So many of the students who make up the university’s population are from more well-populated or otherwise notable cities and states. Likewise, these same students seldom plan to stay in Eugene after they complete their education. Many of us dream of bigger and brighter things and places, like lost souls in limbo, waiting for the beginning of the rest of our lives. In this sense, Eugene is a liminal space, a waiting room, a threshold between one place and the next.
Glimpses of campus evoke these eerie, liminal familiarities. Caught at an off time of day or year, 13th Avenue and respective on-campus buildings can feel disconcerting to exist in when there are no other souls in sight. Certain spots on campus feel wrought with importance, untouchable and so external to us as students because they’ve seen thousands of us before, and they will see thousands more after we leave. The air is thick with their ghosts and their stories; we can feel them, and the not knowing is unsettling.
While this may be true for most college campuses, Eugene is just a tad more special. Beyond the inherent nature of a long-standing, historical university, Eugene is a city, tucked away in the crux of a valley cloaked in trees, fog, and clouds that, were it not for the University and Phil Knight, would hardly be grounds to put on a map. Physically isolated by the hills, Eugene is the University of Oregon, and the consequences of this are two-fold.
The first is cabin fever. On occasion, I have an overwhelming desire to get away from school; to just pretend for a little while that it is not all I live and breathe, an aching desire for something more, something different. But outside this pocket, there is little to escape to. The closest options are Beaver territory, which would hardly feel like an escape from academics, or Portland, which, clocking in at 2 hours away, is hardly feasible for frequent visits/breaths of fresh air. With or without means for transportation, Eugene can feel claustrophobic.
The second, by the same token, is how this very disconnection isolates students from opportunities outside the university. Many universities in established cities – ones that are known as cities first – are rich with opportunities to get involved in internships, extracurriculars, or other pursuits that bolster educational experiences. Eugene, on the other hand, is sorely lacking in that area for most academic and creative pursuits, forcing students to create their own opportunities. As Timothy Carson, an author on liminality, told the New York Times in 2021, liminal spaces are what you make them, and one can either drown or swim. This leads to the rare but exquisite displays of initiative, ambition, and creativity that are evidenced by trailblazers like the Racks entrepreneurs, founders of magazines like Align and Ethos, and the countless student-run specialized clubs. It is an environment that requires drive, innovation, and leaves students with the alchemy to turn lead into gold.
In this sense, Eugene is a liminal space more akin to a lily pad than a stepping stone; it is a living, breathing thing. It may be a threshold between two places, but it is not a threshold of stagnation. Rather, it is a chapter isolated in its purpose to breed opportunity and feed spirit, even amidst apparent desolation.
And it is this very desolation that makes Eugene a liminal space. So far from anything else, if I were to visit it again, it would nearly have to be for its own sake. But it hardly feels realistic, and were it not for the people, it is nearly certain that I would never come to Eugene again. But therein lies the silver thread undergirding Eugene’s heart: the people. In the same way that opportunities here are jewels that glimmer all the more for the pressure required to form them, the relationships formed in the isolation and concentration of the Willamette Valley are likewise especially precious. The campus and the surrounding area become all the more bright and lush. Stuck in this waiting room together, we fill it with lights.
And it is these bright lights we will miss when our name is called to leave the waiting room. Liminal spaces also often evoke a sense of nostalgia, and Eugene is no different. College years are arguably some of the most discernible years of our lives. What I mean by this is that, thus far, and generally speaking, never before have our lives been so clearly divided into chapters.
College is a clear chapter, with a memorable start and end, filled with a mess of becoming, mistakes, and excitement that will mark it as a definitive era in our lives. Many feel nostalgic for their college years, presumably because of their chapter-like nature. For a fleeting period of time, we are all nestled into the same little pocket in the earth. We utterly transform, breaking down and building versions of ourselves, again and again, trying new things, all the while equally terrified and exhilarated. And we do it all alongside each other.
And when we leave, maybe we will leave our hearts here. Or at least, the hearts of versions of ourselves we’ve since grown out of. The ghosts of who we once were will stay here, enmeshed in the bricks of the halls we once wandered, and the air will be thick with the ambiguity of our untold, lost stories. And thus we will haunt newcomers, we will be the richness of the history here, because this place will remember us as we were, and we will remember it, as it was.
Sources:
The Pleasant Head Trip of Liminal Spaces | The New Yorker
Anna Viden is a senior majoring in Psychology with minors in Sociology and Media Studies.