It is autumn, the time of year when I am most in love with the world, happiest to live in the northeast, and most prone to daydreaming.  I walk and imagine that, once upon a time, this was the season when communities gathered in the town square to celebrate the harvest over spiced drinks, firelight and dancing, fueled by the special vigor that only an impending potentially deadly winter can generate.

Last year was the most beautiful autumn of my remembered life:  it began for me with a visit to Ann Arbor when its leaves began to change, a return to be outdoors for class three days a week in Ithaca, and then home to catch New York’s peak during Thanksgiving (I took a very long walk in the golden parks).  I anticipated the season again eagerly this year, when I live on Cornell’s campus.  Fall came earlier this year and it seems unlikely that New York will be as beautiful when I come home, but I am hoping against reason that I am wrong (can anyone there please let me know?  Are the maples yellow now or bare?)  I have been looking forward to Thanksgiving since September. Some of my most sacred rituals of the year are getting a haircut and walking my neighborhood the morning before, the dinner with my extended family at grandpa’s, and a football game in the park with high school buddies I see that day only the day after.

This season I have enjoyed a daily walk across the prime parts of Cornell’s famous campus.  Today, I invite you along.

This is Beebe Lake, viewed from an overlook well back from its edge.  It is a manmade body of water dividing North from Central Campus.  Cornell Plantations, the botanic gardens and my sponsor, maintains this land and lies behind me.  To my left is the hill I will ascend to go to Cornell’s famous School of Agriculture.

In every picture that follows, I will be walking forwards.

This is the path from the southwest corner of the lake up to the Ag Quad.

And here’s the quad, my quad. Behind me is the library in which I should be writing my thesis (“action project”) about now. The building to the left is Plant Science, the building where my department and office are. It is, appropriately, covered in ivy, ringed with gardens, and full of people with knowledge I crave.

As you can tell, I waited a couple weeks too long to take these pictures (which really I took two weeks ago) and the loss is most evident in this picture. This is the back of the A.D. White House, the house of the first president. You’ll have to take my word that at the hour before sunset in fall, this is the most beautiful short-distance view on campus. The bare trees in the foreground are red maples, the light through them casts an amazing color. The planting beds, now cleared for the winter, are full of a huge and dense diversity of flowers, used for study in the herbaceous materials course. Behind me is the Big Red Barn, a quaint little one-story dedicated to recreation for grad students. In good weather, many come and sit on the lawn here, drinking the $1 beers on Friday.

The Arts Quad: Little more than a path on the way for me, but home to most of the undergraduates and some fine oak specimens (green and russet in distance).

Pausing to turn right: Oh, hickory, you are quite something, aren’t you? That golden fellow is a shagbark hickory. I played cribbage with my girlfriend last year under this tree (I destroyed her) and the little (5 story) museum past it is the Johnson Museum of Art, designed by architect Robert Landsman, who unfortunately cannot make it to Thanksgiving this year.

Let’s turn back towards home.

Libe (Library) Slope, the most famous view on campus, an Olmstead design. When the sun shines in summer, girls sunbathe; in fall, couples cuddle and watch the sunset; in winter, they sled past the postings that limply declare that activity to be prohibited.

Keeton House. This is the newest dorm on campus. They were still installing railings and doors and certifying the dining hall for safety when Zach and I moved me in. My room is the third and fourth windows from the left on the lowermost floor. It’s a nice place that tonight played host to two undergrads who had never met each other, hit it off, and talked for two hours in my chairs.

It’s a good job, living here with the task of mentoring and programming for them, but sometimes personally draining, a powerful force drawing me back to an earlier stage of life. It also makes me a paid part of a system whose adoption at Williams I opposed vigorously—Cornell’s “West Campus House Initiative” is a predecessor to and analog of Williams’ “Residential Life Initiative.” I have a lot I’ve been waiting to say about my very real experience with whether being part of a paid social programming staff helps or hinders development of student independence, but that is a topic for another post.