Between a rock and a hard place

Fifty miles up the river from New York City one can step back in time to a land and a time far, far away. The gray granite buildings that rise up from a plain overlooking the Hudson River inspire awe even in those who view the military with suspicion. Not only the architecture, but the very gray granite itself, engenders thoughts of Duty, Honor, Country. It is impossible to imagine that any other material besides gray granite could have been used to construct the United States Military Academy at West Point, home of the Long Gray Line, where cadets parade around in various and sundry uniforms of, you guessed it, … gray.

West Point is the oldest, continuously garrisoned military post in the United States. It has been garrisoned since 1778, when it served as a fortress overlooking the strategic Hudson. Naïve colonials thought they could string an iron chain across the river to keep back British ships. Foolish lads! West Point has served as the home of the U.S. Military Academy, the nation’s first service academy and training ground for future Army officers, since its founding in 1802. The official colors of West Point are black, gray, of course, and gold. (These represent the three components of gunpowder: charcoal, saltpeter, and sulphur. In case you were wondering.)

It sounds like I could have taken all of this from a visitor’s brochure. And I probably could have. But I didn’t have to. For you see, I have it all memorized, that and all sorts of other minutiae I am incapable of erasing from my brain, no matter how hard I try. I envision myself one day as a senile codger in an old folks’ home sitting in the front hallway reciting “How is the cow?” ad infinitum.

“How is the cow?” you might ask. “What is that?”

And I and countless thousands of other former West Point cadets would unhesitatingly reply: “Sir, she walks, she talks, she’s full of chalk; the lacteal fluid extracted from the female of the bovine species is highly prolific to the nth degree.”

A lot clearer now? I didn’t think so.

While you might imagine that a place like the United States Military Academy, a bastion of order and discipline and rules and regulations, would be all about black and white, you would be completely wrong. West Point is all about gray.

The gray granite blocks of the barracks and the Mess Hall and the academic buildings convey coldness, hardness, strength: a fortress. On the one hand, a fortress might mean security, a refuge, a safe place. On the other hand, it might be a prison. Are you inside, wanting to get out? Or outside, wanting to get in? Or both?

Is that even possible?

Yes. The gray granite walls of an institution can represent both a refuge and a prison. At the same time.

Granite is an igneous rock. It used to be molten lava. Granite formed when slowly pooling pockets of magma became trapped beneath the earth’s surface millions and millions of years ago. Granite can be many different colors from pink to gray, depending on the types of minerals it contains, but gray granite is what West Point is all about. West Point would never be pink.