Some things I like about Morgantown

Most of all, I like walking here. I like hiking too, but really I like just walking around. It's fun to walk here because there are hills everywhere and because it is very beautiful. Even the little suburban streets and houses in my neighborhood are beautiful. Not in any particularly spectacular way, but passing by the houses seems to give a small glimpse of the lives of the people there. Of course, there is natural beauty. The forest that once covered the region is still here in patches and thinned spots, some larger than others. There are places that with the exception of a trail being made, have been left to the woods. It's like a temperate rainforest. In these places, the autumn leaves cover the ground year long. When it's warm, there are flowers and a green canopy that gives shade. The sun through the top layer of leaves seen from below is one of the most strikingly beautiful things I've ever seen. It's the sort of fleeting and mundane beauty that can't be captured with photographs because part of what makes it beautiful is the fact that you're seeing it. The skies here, in the early morning and evening, also have that sort of beauty. Every day that I see the purples, pinks, blues, and oranges; the clouds that resemble brush strokes, I'm moved and I understand why people would paint the sky or photograph it. But if I did, especially if I did it every time I felt like it, it would just be one sky among so many that are fundamentally the same.
I digress.
There is also man made beauty. The most beautiful things here are old, like the old bridges and the old brick buildings downtown. For a long time I never even looked up and didn't notice that most of these buildings were brick. Some of them still have metal signs near the top saying what they used to be for, which is sort of charming. Somehow, for me, the urban decay that downtown has undergone is also charming. The graffiti and destruction and dilapidation in some parts, I guess I like it. To digress once more, recently I went up a fire escape on a building near Walnut Street, which is sort of a back street (it was a building behind buildings), because I had always wanted to go on one and see the view. While on it, I saw graffiti on a neighboring building, also a building behind buildings. It said "I remember playing the violin." It could only be seen from that fire escape or the lower roof of that building.
On the borders of the Rail Trail, there are industrial constructs, buildings as well as things like pipes, some dilapidated, some not, all of which are sort of ugly, but they somehow mesh so well with the nature and become wonderful. It's sort of like the houses, they seem to give a small glimpse of other people's lives.
The town and region as a whole don't really have a lot of people and are sort of solitary. This is something that I personally like.
Immersed in beauty and solitude and in constant motion, you can both lose and find yourself. You can remember and forget, at the same time. It all leaves you, and it's very pleasant. That is why I like walking here, and I guess that is why I like it here.
Another thing I really like are the locally owned businesses here, mostly food, especially the bakeries. I can reach most of them from home or school through walking or public transportation, which is really nice. I have pleasant memories of afternoons walking downtown eating gelato or a baguette, and feeling very happy and somehow cosmopolitan.
I never really thought about how much I like it here, actually. This isn't even everything I like, and in truth, I sort of like everything. Who'd have thought.
-Eliana