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.There is enormous power in those old gray stones, cloistered away up on the Mountain.I used to think that the last sound many new graduates heard as they rolled out through the Domain’s stone arch was the triumphant laughter of long-dead bishops and generals.The sheer, dreaming old beauty on the Mountain is the snare, of course.Those who do not need it often do not stay.A high percentage of freshmen and sophomores do not return.Some flunk out, but many simply bolt back to the rich, comforting stench of the world.Those who do stay somehow find that they need bells in their ears, and plainsong, and countless angels dancing always on the heads of pins.And, oh, the mossy old stones and the flying dark gowns and the ranked pennons in the chapel looking for all the world like medieval banners, and the slow turn of the seasons in the great hardwood forest, and the mists of autumn and the white snowfall of spring dogwoods; the entire world spread out at one’s feet from the flank of the Steep, and the drunkenness of poetry and mathematics and the illicit flow of good bourbon and the night music of concerts and dances through new green leaves, and the delicately bawdy laughter of young girls and the sheen of their flesh and hair, and the trembling awareness of the cold dew and dawn breaking on hangovers after you have talked all night and sung many songs and perhaps made out by the lake on the Steep.These things are golden barbs in the flesh and will hold long after you have left the Domain.Sewanee is eccentric and elitist and chauvinistic and innocent and arrogant and very, very particular, and it holds its own like a great gray raptor.It has held a deep-laid part of me for all the years since I left it.How could it not? It has been my future, as well as my past.* * *If I said that I was happy in the Domain, I would not be telling the truth.I know that I thought that I was, but for more than three of those four years what I felt was a kind of sweet abstracted comfort, a feeling of well-being that I perceived but did not quite feel.The campus was inordinately beautiful; there was charm in all its seasons.I never ceased noticing that beauty, even if it did not pierce me through, as it well might have before that summer.How lucky I am to be here, I would think, drifting across campus on a stained-glass fall afternoon, or in a powdery little winter snowfall.And it was true.It would have been awful to have to look at strip malls, exhaust-clogged freeways, the rows of barracks-like housing that haunted so many campuses.I would probably smile as I thought it; once my roommate, a diminutive dumpling of an economics major from New Jersey, said that I reminded her of a character in a bad romantic movie, drifting down University Avenue wrapped in a tan trench coat, my hair flying in a bitter little wind, smiling a goofy secret little smile.I tried to replace the goofy smile with an expression of alert interest, but I did not often succeed.Even I could sometimes feel the corners of my mouth tugging up.But it was mere contentment; I did not think there was any exaltation left in me.That had swirled into the whirlpool that had taken Nick and Sherwood Forest and the sheer delight of being young.It did not seem to matter on the Mountain.Vice-Chancellor Martinson was a friend of my grandmother’s; he had been best man in her wedding to my grandfather, and she had been on the Mountain many times.“I always wished women had been allowed to go there when I was college age,” she said.“I wanted Finch to go.But then you came along, and I found the perfect candidate.I only wish I’d thought of it sooner.We could have visited; you could have gone into your freshman year knowing the college.I think it might have made you very happy.”“I love it just the same,” I said.“It’s made me happy, Grand.”“Has it, darling? I know it’s been satisfying for you….”She let it trail off, and I did not reply.Satisfying.Yes, of course.The Mountain had given me all the warmth my heart could hold.My grades were good.I loved my English major and thought my professors empathetic and gifted.Some became quite good friends, in a seemly, facultyish way, and even Dr.and Mrs.Martinson had me to dinner a few times, a fact that did not endear me to my classmates, even if it was only a sweet nod to my grandmother.And when Laureen, my New Jersey dumpling roommate, asked crossly why I never dated, I was able to say, “I do date.I’ve gone to every prom; I went to all the concerts this winter; just last week I went to the movies with—”“Oh, you know what I mean,” she snapped.“If I looked like you I’d have dated every single male on this mountain by now!”“There’s still time,” I replied a bit sharply.I did date.I just had not felt any real connection with my dates.My mother was always asking me why I didn’t bring some of my friends home to visit, and I knew she meant young men
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