The small college campus comes alive this month, in these parts vibrant and paintable. Bethany College is its own park in Lindsborg with paths along gardens and water features. In North Newton, the great limestone castles of Bethel College. In Salina, Kansas Wesleyan seems a hive of new construction along its venerable landscape. McPherson College bustles beyond its great brick arch.
School is in and colleges are busy, suddenly aroused and taking deep breaths and looking about as though they had just come out of a long nap.
It’s a common scene: Vans and wagons tossed against the curb, doors open, piles of clothing and boxes of whatnot lying about, trains of people bearing armloads in and out of doorways and along the halls like stewards overloaded, preparing to pitch camp after a long day on safari.
Early days are for searching: a place to park, for the lost power cord, the missing back pack, a better chair, a code to log in; or for negotiating ‒ a place to park, a bigger closet, a later class, a reluctant window, an open window, a not-so-reluctant roommate.
On campus the stale air leaves unopened rooms, chatter revives vacant halls and in the dorms the occasional snap of a bed sheet announces another semester bivouac.
Dining halls come to life with the thrum of greeting and gossip, the thumps of bags on table top, the scents of kitchen, the running symphony of chatter, the moan of moving chairs, the scrape and clatter of utensils and trays.
On the practice fields, shouts and whistles, cleats tear into the ground, more shouts, more whistles, more sweat.
In town the coffee houses resupply for the course of hanging out, the return of laptops and their masters, the recipe for chai latte. Food stores restock the ramen.
The small campus is a landscape of ripe anticipation, of finding new exposures and renewing old ones, of adventure and understanding, of days to welcome the departure of summer heat for the chill and wet of autumn, even the icy clamp of winter.
The grounds are astir, people moving along the walks, among the gardens, past the statues and fountains, the beds with grasses moving in the breeze. Here are the luscious filaments of opening week, prelude to autumn, its brisk dawns and freshly laundered air. Summer, its vacant stare of oppression and heat, is doomed to memory.
Youth has returned, carrying promise and energy, and the grit and pluck of inspiration. The students move over the grounds as though skating to music, and the campus seems to cohere – a really thrilling thing to watch, bodies at last freed in their persistent attempt to catch up with the spirit.
A campus brings to a town the revivifying energy of youth, of classes for the enrolled and lessons for us all.
