I was in high school when I first encountered the lakes. I had come for a campus visit and had second thoughts about this place I had long dreamed of attending. I was tired of working so hard and knew Notre Dame would be harder still. The University was seen then as a kind of Catholic service academy. There were no girls, no social life, no cars, the only fun was a pickup game of basketball at the Rock and a room full of guys. It was colder and greyer and windier than I imagined Siberia to be. I was thinking a warm-climate state university was the place for me as our family drove slowly between the Rockne Memorial and Saint Mary’s Lake. The lake was frozen solid, and I had never seen such a thing, and my sister, a Saint Mary’s student, was talking about all the ducks on the lake and my mother asked, “But where do the ducks go in the wintertime?”
Few people would understand the poignancy of this question, but I—a keen reader of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye—knew its significance, for during Holden Caulfield’s flight to New York City he is concerned about the ducks in Central Park in winter. On several occasions he asks just that: “Where do the ducks go in the wintertime?” So my mother’s question carried an eerie echo, and I looked to the lake and saw, dotting its frozen surface, whole flocks of ducks—looking miserable perhaps, but holding their own on the Siberian landscape. Then, as the car turned past the Grotto, my sister said, “They stay here I guess,” and just then I looked up and saw the dome. It was shining brilliantly through the trees. I took it as a sign.
I have returned to this notion—Notre Dame as a kind of beacon, a place that defied harsh or profane elements—often over the years. When the ways of the world have gotten me down, when the course of human affairs felt misguided or wrong, I’d take solace in Notre Dame as a place of hope and virtue, or at least good intentions and a diligent conscience. In some ways, the University is countercultural in its heritage and values, its singular commitment to doing what’s right, acting on principle rather than pursuing temporal temptations and seeking worldly rewards. When discouraged—by the institution or life—I’d hold fast to the many good people who are here, and be buoyed by their example. “Their blood is in the bricks,” the legendary teacher Frank O’Malley used to say of those who had given their lives to Notre Dame. Their gifts and memories reside in me.
Notre Dame is indeed a place apart, a refuge, and yet a community—whose neighborhood is the wider world, not so much in need of enlightenment or redemption as it deserves care and service. Notre Dame is a place where you may speak of God or the soul without ridicule or derision. A place to welcome the good hearted, where idealism isn’t silly, where sentiment is respected, and expressed without embarrassment.
There is to me—I sensed it when I first walked onto campus—a defining but undefinable spirit here, an abiding presence. Invisible but real, ineffable but palpable, it permeates the physical, tangible reality of campus. A touch of the divine dwells here. And we feel it, I think, because that quiet, mysterious presence resonates with something deep inside us—some other ineffable presence, spirit or soul that responds to this sacred and very special place.
There was a time when people here spoke of “the Notre Dame mystique,” and the meaning was known, without need for explanation. Some years later, when discussing a commercial venture he thought risked turning that spirit into a commodity, being traded or parlayed into profit or public relations, an older colleague warned, “Let us not squander the mystique.” Change, of course, is inherent in the place; a university is dedicated to advancement, to growth, to superseding the boundaries of previous generations. But it’s good to stay rooted. And to honor that presence that lives beyond words.
So the lakes remain my favorite patch of campus, the sanctuary I still return to for grounding when other pathways have carried me away. Others may find their niche at the Grotto, a residence hall chapel or the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Or even a bench on God Quad, still the University’s heart and core. But I prefer the lakes—with Old College and the Log Chapel quietly standing by.
I also favor the lakes because that’s where it all began—and because in those beginnings, in the naked beauty and clarity of the lakes, I can still feel Notre Dame’s earthy, essential nature. For me, who has walked these lakes for almost half a century now, those footpaths lead to the purest spirit of the place.
(excerpted from Reflections)
