Look-Out for Snow

Long ago, when I was in high school, my chemistry class took a trip to see the Penn State Nuclear Reactor.  Like any good trip to Penn State, we had to stop at the creamery to get some ice cream.  It was a nice spring day, so we all ate outside.  While everyone was eating, my friends and I walked over to the very edge of the plateau by the creamery to the edge of campus.  At this edge of campus, there was a short wall that we sat on, to look out across the field toward the Law building and Arboretum.  I found this area very cool to be able to look out across the yard and see far away, while behind us was only a bunch of buildings crowding our vision.  That is the reason that I went to this spot again on a lovely (by lovely I mean horribly freezing, and windy) winter night.

I don't actually know what this place is called, so, I like to call it the Look-Out by the Creamery.  I call it this because I like lookouts, where you can see for a distance, and because it is by the creamery (and because I like creameries too).  The only thing of note in this area is a short wall, just tall enough to sit on the edge of a yard that stretches to the road.  As I said before, I went to this place on a lovely night in the middle of winter (by that I mean five days before spring), just two days after a blizzard so large (by prediction) that it cancelled classes at the Pennsylvania State University.  Suffice to say, there was a lot of snow on the ground that night.

Standing at this wall, you can see for a pretty far distance, farther than from most other places on campus.  For this reason, it is a great place to look out into the distance and imagine what is out their.  This is a place to ponder visions of the future and ways to reach those visions.  Along the base of the wall are small lights, that can light the way into the darkness of the future and the unknown.  However, on this night the snow had piled up enough to completely cover these lights.  The only hint that there was anything under the snow but the ground, was the glow coming from the lights.  This shows just how powerful this light is in shining through the darkness of the unknown (and the whiteness of snow).

Sometimes however, our vision of the future can be blurred by things happening in our lives.  This blurring our vision can even affect our learning in knowledge.  This reminds me of something my fourth grade teacher used to tell us when we were struggling with division.  She said that at that point are understanding of it was like we were trapped in  a blizzard (how ironic) and that eventually we would find our way out of the blizzard and into an understanding of division.  Even today when I think back to trying to learn division, all I can picture in my head is a storm of dense snow.  Our visions of the future can be blurred by these blizzards in our mind.  However, once we are able to remove these blizzards from being in our way, we can envision the future.

(I must confess that that whole last paragraph was inspired by me taking this really blurry picture (my excuse is that I couldn't feel if my fingers were still attached) and then by my effort to make the picture look more presentable.)

The Look-Out by the Creamery may not be a location that many people on campus notice, or even think about, but it is a very important place to me.  I believe this is truly a place where you can look out and envision what the future will hold, even when it is blurred by the many blizzard in our lives (both physical and mental).  Next time you want a place to just sit and watch the cars drive by, people walking, or just the word, I recommend you go to the Look-Out by the Creamery, just please wait until spring truly starts.