A bunch of friends from UW and I are doing an internship in Mountain View, California. We take the opportunity to visit nearby Stanford whose campus we had heard great words for. The campus was indeed beautiful. Part of our sightseeing included the campus's cactus garden. One cactus was particularly interesting: It curiously grew sideways, almost crawling throughout its life, until it found an obstacle, a rock, and only then did it become a normal standing cactus (the tallest one, too).
Fast Forward: Fall of 2008 (less than a year ago)I am now a student at Stanford and some friends are visiting California. I take them to the cactus garden and we accidentally stumble upon the curious cactus. It seems the cactus has fallen and looks almost dead. Perhaps the rock was not a big enough obstacle to sustain its growth. Perhaps it was just too old and it was time for it to and provide "space for growth" for the normal cacti which have now grown quite tall.
It could be a sad story to some, but to me it looks more like a celebration of life in its full form: Good and Bad.
