May was a strange month for New York weather-- random downpours and days that seemed like they were from all four seasons served as proof that Mother Nature can rarely make up her mind. However, on the 22nd of May, the day of our field trip to the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan, she did. The skies were gray and foggy, and the air was muggy with a slight breeze: the perfect conditions for mourning.

I suppose she decided that this was not a joyride, as some had expected it to be, and she blocked the sun with the intentions of making sure we knew this. The day was thus bathed in gray, both in the skies and the memorial itself. While I normally dislike clouds, as they tend to make me irritable, I thought they fit the somberness of the day.

Without the sun or stifling heat to distract me, it made every bit of the memorial stand out much more. Since the museum was closed, there were few actual monuments to admire. There were the two pools, with the names of the deceased engraved in their rim, and the aptly named “Survivor Tree” that weathered both the attacks, Hurricane Sandy and a blizzard, and an uprooting due to those storms. However, those features were all the memorial needed to make its point: New York was mourning, but surviving.

Seeing the names on the pools made me consider all the people affected by these attacks, which happened when I was too young to remember it. They were not just names to me; they were people, and their deaths have an everlasting effect on people today. The grayness of the skies reflected on the pools, making them look more like tears of those impacted. It reminded me of a funeral, and as the memorial serves as a grave to those whose bodies were never recovered, it was a suitable atmosphere.The tree seemed to represent New York itself. No matter what hardship its citizens face, they always survive, and become stronger as a result.

Reflection on thoughts such as these was where I dedicated most of our time spent there, as there were few things to actually see. As a result, the trip was over quickly. Any longer than the time we spent would make the visit seem too much like a trip for fun, which it was not.

As we left, walking out slower than we had entered, our faces seemed to exude the same gray hue that Mother Nature had filled the sky with. Perhaps she does know how to make up her mind, after all. She certainly did on that day.