Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1809

Walking into a classroom where posters of the World’s greatest paintings cover every inch of the wall can be intimidating, especially if the teacher notoriously hates freshmen and it is your first day of sophomore year. But two seconds into class, Mr. Luce assures us that his crusade against the freshmen species was merely to amuse older students and faculty... and to instill the fear of God in them.

This was the beginning of my sophomore year at Barstow. This was also the year where I would become someone else. Freshmen year had gone by in the same manner as middle school. I always sat in the corner, did nothing over the weekends, and hid out in the “Bat Cave” (also known to the school as the men’s restroom) during breaks. Hopefully, people can notice a difference in my behavior these days. I will not bore my reader with all that I do or how I found confidence, but I want you all to know high school did not really begin for me until sophomore year when I walked into Mr. Luce’s English class.

Friday afternoons with Mr. Luce were possibly the class’s finest moments. We would walk into class, the last hour of the day and consequently of the week, all tired and anxious for the weekend. When Mr. Luce sensed this, he would lean back in his chair and ask us if we had any questions. “About what?” the class responded. “Anything,” he said. The class then spent fifty-five minutes barraging Mr. Luce with questions about himself. “What was your worst vacation?” “What was your favorite band?” Things of this sort, and he would always turn his answers into little anecdotes about how life should be lived as an individual or about how to be yourself or just about how life can be ironic. These all fit with the issues I was tackling and what all emerging sophomores must wrestle with. At the root of these issues lies the underlying question, “Who am I?”

Writing this now as a senior at Barstow, I can confidently say I recognize myself in Abbey in the Oak Forest by Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich’s Cloister Ruin at Eldena was the first painting I ever wrote about in Art History class, so it seems fitting Friedrich and his romanticism found me again. Unlike Cloister Ruin, Abbey occurs at sunset. The horizon divides the painting in two; one an unknown blackness and the other a setting sun. The sun is setting over my time at Barstow and in the classroom where hundreds of masterpieces haunt the walls. The trees are dying. The people below are leaving, full of memories of what this crumbling edifice used to be and of the life the trees once fostered.

In my first blog post, I wrote what Cloister Ruin represented in Friedrich’s own life. Now I tell you what Abbey means for me: the waning of an era, an era where I grew and became who I am. Memories of this era will always be in the peripheral regions of my mind, just as the abbey will always stand in the forest. Sometimes I will return to this memory and linger there. As I look back upon it all, I will be thankful for all the opportunities I received at Barstow. I will be grateful for the person I became in those halls. And I will be forever indebted to the teachers who helped me grow and to the students who grew with me.