When fall weather sets in, speculation begins about the date for Mountain Day. One of Mount Holyoke College’s** oldest traditions, Mountain Day, provides an unexpected break from classes and other obligations, and many students spend the day enjoying outdoor activities, in particular, hiking on Mount Holyoke in Skinner State Park. The early morning pealing of the Mary Lyon Hall bell announces to the campus that it’s Mountain Day.

Mountain Day is a tradition for life.

So you will have to excuse me today, I’ll be taking a moment to just be and revel in the majesty that is the start of fall.

** Chemist and educator Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke College (then called Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in 1837, nearly a century before women gained the right to vote. Today, her famous words—”Go where no one else will go, do what no one else will do”—continue to inspire Mount Holyoke students.

As the first of the Seven Sisters—the female equivalent of the once predominantly male Ivy League—Mount Holyoke has led the way in women’s education. A model upon which many other women’s colleges were patterned, it quickly became synonymous with brilliant teaching and academic excellence. In 1861 the three-year curriculum was expanded to four, and in 1893 the seminary curriculum was phased out and the institution’s name was changed to Mount Holyoke College.