Looking up, the sun above Old Kenyon makes its way through the clouds like a gentle ballet. Students desperate to be unchained from winter’s darkness are its eager audience, swearing they heard the sun whisper good morning. A student returns from her morning run. The soles of her shoes rub against the rocks, and the drumbeat mimics the base of a waterfall. Coffee lids pop and water bottle straws hiss. An alarm chimes behind a Leonard window. Like a child, the bell sound crescendos unattended. I imagine showers running, knobs squeaking, roommates whispering, and microwaves beeping. The copper locks double click and the day has begun.
In Hayes 315, the professor distributes a packet of equations. Pencils scratch, erasers chafe, and hands slip. Then, there is a heavy silence as students comb through brief recollections. Like the sudden clang of a pot lid, memory strikes and calculators turn on with a few melodious beeps. When the hour-hand reaches nine, chairs groan as they are reluctantly tucked away. Backpacks swing, their straps strain a faint whistle. A pounding avalanche of Birkenstocks ensues as students descend from the third floor. They shuffle through the double glass doors and, all at once, sound is lost in the wide spring air.
After class, my friend tells me to meet her in the basement of Rosse, where music drowns in cushioned walls and its friendly ghost prances the halls. When I scan my K-card, a high-pitched beep and subsequent click usher me inside. The building’s silence hangs like tapestry – arresting yet untouchable. As I crack a practice room door, the melody of piano keys escalates. It implores me to sing along, and though I have always defined myself as an observer, I am suddenly belting Adele’s “When We Were Young.”
Across the stream of pebbles, chatter, and hurried footsteps otherwise known as Middle Path, tulips sprout beside the chapel. Their petals reach upwards as if grasping onto the whisper of spring’s arrival. The bell tower chimes, once, twice, thrice – celebrating Friday afternoon. As I approach the crosswalk, I wave thank you to a white Prius whose brakes squeal on my left. My sandals echo in the welded hollow below Philander Chase’s seal. When I hear a horse’s soft grunt, I look up and nod hello to the Amish vendors selling blueberry jam. Further along, the dog bowl at the base of the Village Market catches the first droplets of an afternoon storm. Thunder echoes in the perpetual distance, so I pick up my pace.
Safely inside, I squeal, barely catching myself on the slippery stairs. In Norton 201, my backpack falls to the hardwood floor and my water bottle rolls into the dark, but I’m already collapsed on Jaya’s bed. She greets me with a gentle kick as if to say don’t forget this isn’t your room. Georgia picks at guitar strings, and Renee unrolls a ball of yarn–two stitches away from a baby blue blanket. The Kenyon Collegian crinkles under our fingertips like leaves at the turn of fall. Casual guesses dangle between us and the finish line. I doze off, blanketed by our comfortable conversation.
It is not silence that has provided me the calm I have longed for since childhood. When I keep walking, away from Norton, through Mount Vernon, and into the world, I hope to make good noise–Kenyon noise–to infuse the lives of strangers and friends with the peace of Gambier, Ohio.
Photos by Fiona Hendryx '26 and Emilie Hankla '26.
