Rainy days and Mondays
Emmy Jansen
MSMU Class of 2023
(12/2021) I sat down to write this article on one of the worst days to be reflecting on the scenery surrounding us. Wafting over the mountains and through the color-changing trees was the pungent odor of fresh manure being laid. At some points during the year, you can smell the surrounding farms while walking through campus. Sometimes we become so immune to it that we stop recognizing the smell; it wasn’t until my mom remarked on the scent during a visit last year that I started to understand what it was.
When I think about the area we live in, I don’t want to focus on only the beauty. Nature is not always beautiful: leaves can poison, algae growth turns water murky and dark, and mud gets caked onto everything it touches. Even the prettiest rose decomposes and the leaves that color the horizon now will be bare and dead in a few weeks.
When I think about how ugly nature can be, I think about the floods from the remnants of Hurricane Ida back in September. Massive amounts of rainfall on top of saturated soil from earlier storms caused flash flooding down the side of the mountain through campus, which eventually breached all the storm barriers the university had put in place. I live in Bradley Hall, the main administrative building of the university with one floor of female students at the very top. The river of flooding came down from the Grotto past Bradley until it hit the roads and lower dorm buildings. We were put into shelter in place because there were no safe walkways around Bradley, and everyone inside would just have to wait. From my fourth-floor view, I watched rainwater not cascade but rush down the mountainside, moving rocks, debris, and even parked cars. The heavy rain and wind leaked through our windows, as it always does, and the humidity soaked the rooms even more.
I do not tell you this to simply display how nature can become destructive and to pride the university on preventing a small disaster from becoming a much larger one. I reflect on this moment because staring out of the dorm windows, watching water and floods drown the campus and leave destruction in its wake, I cannot describe it as anything less than beautiful.
The common connotation of rain is that it pours sadness along down with it. People hate rainy days, and I have never understood this sentiment. One rainy day last spring, I was having a tremendously hard time and that day was bringing a lot of challenges. When getting counseled by a staff member, she apologized that this already-hard day would be made worse by the clouds and rainy weather. I was very quick to assure her that I loved rain and that the dampness would not add any more weight. Her response has stuck with me ever since: "Well, I guess the sky is raining for you then!"
Rain promises growth, as the flowers we find so beautiful would shrivel without water soaking into their roots. We’re thankful for rain when pollen cakes onto our cars in the spring or when August humidity is getting too much to bear. Little kids love jumping in puddles, and I’ll be remiss if I don’t mention that college students love it too, only when no one is watching. I love getting my hair soaked with rainwater, making pictures with droplets on my window, and the feeling of being compressed inside buildings with the rest of humanity as we all seek shelter. I do not undermine the grace of a sunny day, but if we can love rain only when we see how it benefits us, I believe we should love rain all the time. I also think adults should jump in more puddles, even when others are watching.
No one can argue that Mount St. Mary’s is anything less than beautiful. Coming around the bend on Route 15 and seeing Mary’s arms open to welcome you back is one of a Mount student’s favorite views. Looking down from the mountaintop at the fields and trees down below is a close second. It’s what draws many students to study here and spiritually enriches the seminarians next door. I think the reason this has been an institution of higher learning and faith for more than two hundred years is because of the scenery it is built into. If preserved, it will be what keeps us open for the next two hundred years.
There are six chapels spread all throughout campus for students, staff, and seminarians to reflect and be in the presence of God. But my favorite is none of these; I feel a much deeper spiritual connection while walking through the Grotto. If I could put my finger onto why, although there are a multitude of reasons, I think it has to do with the unchanging nature of nature. Seasons come and go, which see plants and trees through various cycles and changes. But when Winter ends, you know Spring will come. There is something to be expected from nature and how even if it doesn’t look the same, it will always be the same in its essence. The forest I walk through around the Grotto is the same forest St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and Fr. John Dubois walked through hundreds of years ago. Nature does not change, but nature changes us.
This scenery has real significance for all who study here. I could’ve gotten a similar education at a big state school in a large college town or a downtown city university. But I would not be the same person I am today, and I credit that not only to the university but to the community and scenery in which it is embedded. I would not want to go to college anywhere else but on the side of a mountain, where I can see the world of potential I will enter into after graduation. The impact of the environment surrounding the Mount cannot be understated. I love nature, especially this nature, even when manure stinks, rivers flood, and cicada carcasses cover the sidewalks.
