It was a grand and glorious spring - that year of our graduation.

It was as if time had speeded up - rushing through the seasons to early summer - and then slowed down, almost stopped, pausing, like the rest of the world in honor of our accomplishment.

The world was young then, alive with possibilities, nothing proscribed. Everything was as it should have been - or else we would soon make it so, for we were the class of 1911.

Every graduation is special, pregnant with promise, full of hope.

And so it should be.

Yet I have become aware of a major gap in your education, almost all of you are ignorant about post turtles.

Travel with me down a dusty road in west Texas, where we come upon a turtle perched on top of the post of a barbed wire fence. (I know that this class will immediately realize that it is most likely a tortoise, not a turtle, but cowboys pay little attention to such fine distinctions.)

The turtle has no idea where it is, or how it came to be on top of the post, or what to do now that it is up there.

And it certainly has no idea how to get down.

And so it sits there, in a state of perpetual bewilderment, suspended between earth and sky, between the next moment and the last.

Each major achievement in life has a little bit of this feeling to it - as if one is suspended, like a moment in midsummer between spring and fall, poised between the known and the unknown.

You will each have a series of achievements in your lives. Each is a threshold to be crossed, ridgelines between watersheds, opportunities for discovery.

But rest assured that there are no post turtles in this class.

You have earned this moment, it is both culmination and commencement.

You have learned that in this process of becoming - in this flow of discovery - that there is great joy.

You have also learned that there are moments to celebrate being, to pause and reflect on all that has enabled the present, and in doing so to summon all those forces to make a purposeful commitment to empowering your own future.

And to celebrate with love and gratitude the special opportunities and special people who have contributed so much to who you are at this moment.

As we celebrate you this day, we are proud of you, we love you, and with all our substance we wish you well and godspeed.

Carry with you the knowledge that the opportunity to make a difference is precisely equal to the responsibility to make a difference.

Carry with you the words of Henry David Thoreau:

Remember thy creator in the days of thy youth.
Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure.
Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the nights overtake thee everywhere at home.
There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
Grow wild according to thy nature.

To all gathered here it is an honor and pleasure to welcome you to the 35th graduation of College of the Atlantic.

And to the commencement of the class of 2007.