The Road to Character – not a novel – has a chapter on struggle and Doris Day’s life journey towards faith. A couple of sentences caught my attention and I’ve been rolling them over, particularly in light of last night’s stunning project presentations from various classes highlighting the hard work that goes on in the arts, in robotics, in psychology, and in social entrepreneurship classes. Fewer people today see artists as oracles and novels as a form of revelation. The cognitive sciences have replaced literature as the way many people attempt to understand their own minds. What? The novel and art dismissed by the cognitive sciences? No more fictional worlds explored, no more self-understanding deepened through characters? The arts unnecessary? Should the dismantling of English Departments begin tomorrow?

Is it the friendships or the relationships that make for a healthy community?

This question came to me when I was on a run the other morning, an early one, when I paused at the western edge of the hayfield near the Nordic start area, the snow guns poking like fragile insect legs into grey morning. The sound of Route 11 traffic to the north and to my left pressed against the deeper quiet of Kearsarge slopes rolling south and to my right. I kept my eyes to the east, on the bright notch between Beech Hill and the ski hill where the sun would rise. I watched the mist sift over the field.

It’s been a long week at school, one of those tough weeks that tests the mettle of individuals and community. It’s been a week of introspection and community reflection, and at the end of it I found myself in the office Thursday night looking at a collection of writings, old favorites by Antoine de Saint-Exupery in a book called Airman’s Odyssey. I was thinking about mountaineering and rock climbing and those experiences of impasse when you find a way forward. Tempering moments.

It arrives in the fall, like a chill wind driving down from the north. It arrives in assembly with announcements from Mike and Michele, whips through on the ACT and SAT test days. It arrives with representatives from different colleges walking across campus: Dickinson, Warren Wilson, Colby, Gettysburg, Hampshire, Elon, a steady weekly presence of visitors on the campus. It rustles through the library, through the dorms, through advisory, through phone calls home. For many seniors it can feel like a tightening vice of isobars, for many parents it the same. Nothing, seemingly, offers protection.

Catching parts of some terrific contests – football, soccer, field hockey – over the past week, I have seen displays of raw athleticism and savvy field plays. Games have been intense, competitive, and enjoyable. I have stood at the sidelines and felt the surge of spectator adrenaline and felt pride (mostly) in the sportsmanship. 

With the rain this week, potentially more on the way next, water flows again in the small creeks, the Blackwater River rolled over its banks Wednesday, and we went from muggy to much cooler. It’s a fickle season with frosts, heat, floods, and a blood moon this week. On the same day the river flooded, I chatted with Corby Leith '92, art teacher and kayaking coach, and he was ecstatic about paddling the rising water. “Oh yeah, this is what we want. Definitely. It doesn’t get any better than this.” There’s always delight and opportunity in the contrast and change.

On Thursday parents, students, and friends traveled to Gloucester, Massachusetts for the send off of Proctor’s Ocean Classroom voyage on Roseway. The smells of the waterfront, the slap of halyards, and the keening gulls swirled in a gyre of beckoning and possibility. The mix of nerves and excitement, that fuel for adventure, was palpable on deck as families hugged and pictures were snapped. After a little more than an hour of mingling, prowling through quarters, meeting the crew, checking out the galley, parents and guests were asked to leave. Gently but firmly. The engine rumbled, lines were cast off, and the Roseway slipped into the gold of late afternoon light. A farewell cannon clap startled the well wishers on the docks and a final cheer stretched across the harbor.

We’re in the window of beginnings when all feels new and the arc of the possible is the dominant trajectory. On Thursday I met with three sections of Freshman Seminar circled up in chairs in the Black Box. We talked a little about Proctor, my role, and the way our community functions, how their start was going. At no time is the arc of possibility more palpable than in September when the campus first fills.