Climate Change for Real

When the holy board of international program directors decided that being an exchange student I am absolutely required to have at least one semester of “campus experience”, I knew that moving up from the middle of Manhattan into the middle of nowhere will be a more than drastic climate change. I am usually very good at getting used to new living environments, but I have to admit, acclimating myself to the Moon would probably be a slightly easier project than my current situation.
Imagine a green bubble in the heart of the Catskills, on the Hudson River, completely cut off from any form of civilization. The first habitation of human beings is found in a 20 minute picturesque drive from our college grounds in the form of two villages with a population slightly above that of the North Pole.
On site, however you’ll find a plethora of rare plant vegetations (with varying levels of hallucinogen content) and a whole range of unidentifiable forest mammals and birds - indubitable proofs of our extreme remoteness and seclusion. What ultimately completes the particularly rich local flora and fauna of the campus site is of course Bard’s uniquely diverse student population of 1,500 undergraduates whose physical appearance is so distinctive that you can easily single them out in even the most crowded Amtrak trains.
Bard, this 540-acre incubator of hyper liberal, alternative minded, post-Woodstock “nerds” (which is what the freshmen were collectively and officially called during the introduction week) reminds me most of the famed hippie enclave, Christiania, in the heart of Denmark’s capital. Much like Copenhagen’s flower power community, Bard is a sort of social experiment; the land of the freest of free and (second) home of the bravest of brave.
At Bard it is difficult to feel like an outcast since everyone is an outcast. Unless you happen to be “normal.” I.e. you happen not to be a pseudo-hippie, a forgotten punk rock star, an anti-everything-that-has-to-do-with-physical-exercise, a staunch atheist, a faithful Marxist, an unappreciated artiste, or haven’t recently changed your sexual orientation.
Since I don’t (yet) belong to any of the above listed castes, it looks like the spring semester will be my most intensive anthropology class ever. Franz Boas and Bourdieu would surely envy me.