As we return from Easter Break, it is with some relief that a clearer picture begins to emerge showing how our sacrifices, as historically meager as they may be, have prevented deaths and slowed the spread of this disease to a pace our hospitals can manage. While it would be premature to describe this good news as a trend, and too early to declare victory, the evidence presently available suggests that there has been a point to all of these inconveniences and disruptions.

The first week of online learning at Ridgeview was marked by many, and sometimes contradictory, qualities. We saw the initiative and determination of individual teachers, the adaptability and perseverance of students, and no little determination and patience from our parents.

Few of us have experienced an event as widespread or as unsettling as the one which now besieges our world. While we have some knowledge of wars, recessions, and pandemics, we have known nothing on this scale. If it feels at all familiar, it is because our memory turns to science fiction novels and dystopian films to find a relatable corollary. While we have been admonished and implored to re-learn how to sacrifice or make the best of austere conditions, for the vast majority of Americans, the challenge is one of mindset rather than material destitution.

There is almost nothing that unsettles the mind quite so badly as disease. We can generally imagine ways in which to defend ourselves against any number of enemies, but the invisibility of a bacteria, virus, or prion combined with the sense that merely going about our day-to-day lives invariably puts us at risk of contracting something from which we might not recover, can nearly undo us. Adding to these wholly natural worries and anxieties is an untrustworthy news media fear mongering one moment and downplaying concerns the next, making it nearly impossible to discern the truth and what our reactions to an evolving situation ought to be. Therefore, we can be forgiven for vacillating between paranoia and complacency. Where does the balance lie? How can we strike a prudent mean that allows us to be vigilant in a practical way?

American history has always been given pride of place within the curriculum at Ridgeview. Our country’s culture and history are given this sort of attention because whatever else our students may go on to become, very nearly all of them will go on to become American citizens.

Few who walk into Ridgeview for the first time in 2020 could imagine that the building began life as a church in 1978. Entering through the front doors, students see the Hoplite logo inlaid in the flooring. The Hoplite was the mascot chosen by Ridgeview students in 2001.

Nevertheless, efforts have been made for our building to tell our story: our purpose, ambitions, and values. In addressing the importance of architecture, the French writer Alain de Botton noted that, “Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better or for worse, different people in different places—and on the conviction that it is architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.”

At the end of each quarter the faculty and administration recognize one middle-school and one high-school student to honor at an awards assembly. Without further explanation, this sounds like an unexceptional occurrence—the kind of mundanity one has come to expect from education as consolation.

Set against this backdrop, Martin Luther King, Jr. enters the national consciousness, most notably with his 1963 I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial. What we recognize today is not simply the man, but the long train of abuses that he stood against.

We hope you will join us on January 18th as we host our fifth annual Post-Solstice Solace at High Peak Camp near Estes Park. It is an opportunity for us to go sledding, snowshoeing, ice skating, ice fishing, and play broomball. The day is unique for more than what we do, but also for where, why, and how we do it.

Shakespeare has Macbeth deliver a nihilistic soliloquy that begins, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.” When death waits for each of us, what can be the ultimate meaning of our lives regardless of how floridly or cleverly they are described in exquisite language?

It is our custom to associate gifts with Christmas rather than to think of Christmas as a gift. In this custom we are not wrong, but fail to see deeply enough.