So on Wednesday morning, our digital imaging professor sent us out around campus for an hour to take pictures that we will then learn how to edit next week. I had grand plans of going all over campus, but my first, and what turned out to be my only, stop was behind the science buildings, over by where the greenhouse and the fountain are. It’s an area not many people go to, since there’s only one or two buildings there and it’s kind of out of the way for most students, but it’s gorgeous, and I knew I’d find some good shots. Little did I know that I would also find the most bizarre/inspiring scavenger hunt ever.
Here’s the story: While taking pictures of a grate overgrown with flowers, I noticed the flattened form of a paper crane off to the side. “Huh.” I thought to myself. “That’s weird.”
I didn’t take its picture because, like I said, it was flattened, and frankly looked a little like trash. I kept walking, and found myself by the fountain, where, much to my surprise, I discovered a second crane, drowned in the water next to a lilly pad. This one I did take a picture of, amused by the coincidence, when out of the corner of my eye, in a potted plant, I noticed a third, the one at the top of this post. “Ok.” I thought. “Now that’s just crazy. I wonder if there are more?”
And oh, were there more. As soon as I realized that this was bigger than just two or three random paper cranes, I ran back to the first one I’d seen, eager to document the entire conspiracy.
Poor little forgotten guy.
There was a purple one in the black-eyed susans, two others in a pot without a plant, and another in a pot of it’s own. At this point, it started getting excited. It was a game. But not just a game, it was more than that. It was transcendent, like I was following in the footsteps of a mystery artist, just praying that I could keep up.
From there, I realized that there had been a paper crane on the very grate I had been photographing when I’d seen the first, propped up from a watery death by its outstretched wings.
I kept searching, and just when I was about to give up and move on from this 
insane quest, I found the best one of all. A tiny, cloud patterned crane, casually tossed into the mulch next to the dirty windows of the greenhouse. It fit, a miniature lifeless life form, safely in my palm. He was so small, so helpless, that I couldn’t help but take him with me. How would I have just abandoned him there, in that wasteland, away from all his big brothers and sisters? He needed a home, and I needed a physical reminder of one of the most exciting things I’ve ever randomly come across.
Even if you asked me, I really couldn’t explain to you fully why this little adventure struck me so deeply. Maybe it was an installation art project. Maybe someone just liked making paper cranes and they all fell out of his or her backpack at once, a stiff Oregon wind carrying them to the resting places where I later discovered them.
But I’d like to think it’s something more. I’d like to think that someone was trying to tell me something, that they wanted me to discover these little cranes and follow their hiding spots so that I could rediscover how beautiful the world is, and how beautiful it is that we can be connected by something so silly, so trivial as oragami paper cranes. And I’d like to think that this person would have wanted me to take one with me, a little piece of the universe, to remind me that we are not alone in this world. But maybe that’s just me.
