The Stairways of Reed College

My southeast Portland neighborhood, Woodstock, is right across busy 39th Avenue from the lovely, liberal arts university, Reed College. If I had half of my shit together when I was a college student, I would have loved going to school there. It is known for its progressive student body and faculty...apparently, however, it supposedly also has a nuclear reactor somewhere on campus...physics is another popular major at Reed. These days I take a lot of pleasure walking down to the campus through the delightfully creepy swamp that sort of bisects the college property. The swamp, called Crystal Springs, during the winter, looks like a setting from of Lord of the Rings. You half expect Gollum to suddenly pop out from beneath the equisetum with a live fish in his mouth. If something does emerge from the water here, it's most likely one of the displaced nutria that live and breed in the swamp.
The venerable campus buildings loom above the springs, kind of a reassurance that you are a stone's throw away from academe. Leading up to these temples of higher learning, from the rough, muddy trail of the springs are a series of rugged stairways. Looking up at them from the trail, I wondered how many Reed students make their way to class each day through the misty, primordial swamp and emerge into "civilization" using these stairways. What a way to start the school day. Perhaps students who use the stairs feel the same way I do when I look up from the trail at these "stairways to heaven"... that I possess knowledge of a secret passageway from the world of untamed nature into the rational world of men.