Norman at Night- An Urban Exploration

Why have I come to the top of this unfinished building in the middle of the night?

This building is what I will consider my first Urban Exploration. The view is fantastic, with the lights of the city of Norman and the University of Oklahoma campus twinkling like fireflies across the horizon. I'm shielded from the howling wind by modern equivalent of a castle's parapets.

Ah, to sit on the roof, lie back, and gaze at the stars with an unobstructed view! The tile is rough and uncompromising, but still I feel my mind sliding softly towards sleep. Can I not see my life as a never-ending quest to find ever more novel and beautiful places to gaze and wonder, dream and ponder?

On top of this roof, I ask myself how much I really need to be happy. To quote Zan Perrion quoting Thoreau in The Alabaster Girl,

Simplify, simplify, simplify. Or as they say in the aeronautics industry, “Simplify and add lightness.” Or as Thoreau so wonderfully put it, “As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

Why have I come to the top of this unfinished building in the middle of the night?

For the view, and for the act of summiting, of course.

Then there's the nice adrenaline rush of getting to the summit. That is, the act of exploring the unknown, and of pushing through fear or hesitation to interact with our environs on our own terms.

Finally, there's the act of exploration itself. I could feel, see, and experience a place in a way almost no one else can or will. And that's pretty cool.