It's just after daybreak of an early September morning on the Hill and the mist is rising off Johnson Pond. The surface of the water is almost invisible, but through the swirling vapors a small inflatable dinghy can barely be discerned, inching its way across the pond toward a flotilla of ducks. The pond is so thick with lime-green algae it quakes like Jello at the slightest motion. The ducks don't seem to care. They are swimming in lazy circles and quacking together sociably, the sound muted between layers of fog. The man in the boat is rowing very quietly, lifting the short oars carefully out of the slime-strewn water, so as not to frighten them. A casual observer might think he was trying to sneak up on the birds. Anyone at the College would know it.      At the far end of the pond, shrouded in mist, a huge moose is stalking through the shallows, sucking up large quantities of pond scum. The man does not see the moose. But the moose sees him. [poke at the ducks to continue]