March 28, 2024 | OPINION | By Ezekiel Lloyd
As a young Ohioan freshly arrived in Colorado, I anticipated an uncomfortable transition from a wet, rainy climate to a dry, arid landscape—and I experienced just that. It did not rain often during my first month here. The National Weather Service reports that Colorado Springs received only 2.74 inches of precipitation in August 2020, 0.61 inches below the usual. The rain came rarely, but it arrived with great bravado each time. On Aug. 26 and 28, it stormed. The precipitation far exceeded the modest showers I had anticipated. They were loud, thunderous downpours.
In the years since, I have learned to better understand Colorado’s strange climate. I gave up anticipating and began accepting. A snowy week followed by a string of sweltering days just before a long weekend of thick fog… That’s March.
The meteorological irregularity of Colorado Springs has shaped my vision of this place. Weather is the independent variable. Years after my first year kicked off with two storms in the first month, I still feel a certain affinity for rainy days in Colorado. When the clouds rolled in on Sunday, Mar. 26, the pitter-patter on my window produced a warm, sentimental state of mind.
I jumped to avoid puddles on the paths, looking up at the sky to see a cloudy, dark gray blanket above. Everything seemed suddenly unfamiliar. I stood by the library parking lot for 15 short minutes—the smell of rain on hot asphalt reminds me of driveways, parking lots and playgrounds. Buildings I’d known for years took on a new form. I became the same kid who moved in four years ago, my eyes fresh and eager. Back then I thought the unseen acres of campus were a mystery I might never solve.
Now, I often fool myself into thinking that I have experienced it all, that my time roaming and exploring the recesses of our 92 acres might, at long last, be at an end.
But then nearly a foot of snow falls on campus overnight. Or maybe a mist stays for an hour each morning for a whole week. The grass turns a little greener or the trees rustle a little louder. The world transforms itself into new majesty without intention or difficulty.
Talking about the weather often feels as boring as appreciating its more mundane manifestations. But I could talk about the weather for hours. It is a steadfast mechanism with no regard for our impression or opinion—a rare type of operator in today’s made-to-order America. Underneath the seemingly superficial conversation about weather lies a telling question: how do you react to the unpredictable, uncaring obstacles of life?
In the last four years, Colorado College’s administration has brought little positive change in my life. Instead, my time as a student was marked by bureaucratic obstacles and a general disconnect between high-level staff and the rest of campus. I hold great affection for our tight-knit campus, but little for the distant administrative force which has taken little interest in our community’s preferences.
But the rain doesn’t come when you ask for it. We certainly won’t find solutions to Colorado College’s long list of challenges before the senior class departs. Nor will much progress come anytime soon after. But the class of 2024 arrived at CC on the heels of changemakers, and I only hope we continued the effort and instilled its significance in our successors.
As a product of my four years, my lens has become jaded. I like the rain, snow and hail because I can adopt a new perspective with great ease.
Outside of the two storms in late August, my first few months at CC were marked by sunny mornings and bright afternoons. The same is true for most of my time here. An open blue sky almost feels too comfortable, familiar and uninspired.
There was one major break from the sunny monotony in my first few months at CC. September 2020 was the eighth snowiest in Colorado Springs’s recorded history. In the middle of the month, I looked outside Loomis to find a soft, frozen sheet on the ground. I spent the quiet night writing a paper for “Monsters, Robots, and Cyborgs,” my first-ever class at CC. When my roommate came into our dorm room, I only turned around because he said my name. In less than a moment I felt the impact of snow on my chest. The ice turned to cold water on my sweater. The memory of the ensuing snowball fight on Montgomery’s quad remains my happiest from those first few weeks of college. Often, when it snows, I pack a snowball and throw it at my freshman year roommate, wherever he might be at the time.
That’s the way I would like to remember campus: Impromptu acts that spell out college at its best, not as it was. Patiently, I will come to forget the sunny days when hours blended together in a monotonous glob of stress, frustration and forgotten anxieties. I’d like to picture rain on parking lots and snow stretched across an open quad and all the other beautiful things I couldn’t control.