Colorado

The Zoom call—an excuse to drink and laugh and talk after a day stuffed with online seminars—ends for me at 9 p.m. My friends have work tomorrow, or school, and it’s two hours later for them. I have school too, but nine feels early. I wander downstairs, break squares from one of the chocolate bars my mom keeps in the back of a kitchen cupboard, and take a short walk through my dark neighborhood, searching for signs of stars behind a curtain of haze.

Sometimes, jostled by the 1 train, I miss driving. Colorado is a wide and open land; jagged, regal mountains spill into yellow plains under the expansive sky. Interstate 70 scrapes the side of Denver and curves westward to become a heavily trafficked, occasionally perilous mountain corridor. Its long tunnels, steep grades, and packs of long-haul trucks make me break out in hives, particularly in rain or snow.

Despite many bright spots, the Columbia women's basketball team dropped back-to-back games in Colorado this weekend, getting beat first at the free throw line and then from behind the arc. In the last of four straight back-to-back weekend games scheduled by head coach Paul Nixon to prepare his team for the Ivy season in January, the Lions fell to Northern Colorado, 71-51, as the Bears sank 13 three-pointers and held the lead from first basket to last buzzer.