By Caroline Crawford

Spring is always a time for discovery, especially here in northern Vermont, where what can feel like an endless wait for the first signs of spring can be slightly bolstered by declarations of, “I think the grass is turning green over there,” or “I saw a crocus at the edge of that pile of snow.” The wait for spring this year on campus, after a winter of record snowfall, felt especially long.

And then one day in early April, as the Marketing and Communications department was busily working in our offices across the street from Main Campus, we saw a sign of spring unlike any other—a young moose, wandering across the lawn that sloped down behind the Holcomb Observatory and to the Winooski River, looking for food.

There’s nothing like a moose on the loose to bring a college community to a screeching halt. Students, faculty and staff made their way across Route 15 over the course of the several days that the moose made her appearance—science majors and psychology majors, professors of sociology and members of the library staff all stood at a distance in awe of the huge beast. The young moose seemed ambivalent to our enthusiasm and eventually made her way to less populous environs.

This surprise was a reminder to me of the thrill of the unexpected. Kyle Johnston ’08 writes in his Firsthand essay about the unexpected discoveries that his liberal arts education at Saint Michael’s is giving him—the discovery of connections between disciplines, ideas, centuries, philosophies.

We can learn so much from unexpected discoveries. Keeping our eyes and minds open are the best ways of staying open to learning, and life. And I know to keep looking out my window.