Freshmen Reconnect with Land in Harvard Forest

March 02, 2000

SEARCH THE GAZETTE

Freshmen walk through knee-deep snow behind Forest Director David Foster on an outing in a frozen marsh. Photo by Justin Ide.

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Freshmen Reconnect with Land in Harvard Forest

By Andrea Shen
FAS Communications

They slog through knee-deep, sometimes thigh-deep snow, sinking unevenly with each step, looking for clues to the landscape.

"What do you see?" calls David Foster, one of the leaders of this Freshman Seminar in the Harvard Forest.

They see cattails, 4 feet high, with spongy tubes at their tips and bits of seed-laden fluff flying off in the wind. They see straw-colored reeds popping out through the snow, bent over at sharp angles. There are iron-gray tree stumps, denuded of bark, and taller trunks, jaggedly broken at their tops and branches. And at the clearing’s edge, there is forest – maple and evergreens drooping with snow.

"Flood," suggests student Nate Fay, and he’s right. Decades ago, beavers dammed nearby streams, flooding this region of the forest and killing the trees. As beavers depleted their food supply, or were trapped by humans, the dams washed out, the water table dropped, and this land reverted to marshland. Woodier shrubs have grown up in the drier perimeter. And in time, this land will be forested again, to be flooded when beavers return to the region.

Foster veers off toward a stand of trees. Unhesitatingly, the students follow him. They sink, they stumble, they rise. No one is willing to be left behind.

David Foster and the students in the Freshman Seminar pause in the middle of the marsh. Photo by Justin Ide.

* * * * *

For four weekends this semester, these students will reconstruct the history of varying landscapes, study the biology and structure of trees, learn about land-use practices like forestry and harvesting, and grapple with the complexities of the modern conservation debate.

Their classroom is the Harvard Forest, 3,000 acres of hardwood and conifers, ponds, swamps, and fields in Petersham, Mass. The Forest was established in 1907, and it supports Harvard’s master’s program in forest science, a summer program in ecology, and numerous courses for schools at Harvard. It is also home to major research projects funded by such organizations as the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Seminar is a combination of scientific rigor and a more fundamental type of connection. "As a society we are increasingly isolated from the natural environment," says Foster, who co-teaches the course with Barry Tomlinson, Edward C. Jeffrey Professor of Biology. "We used to live off the land and use the land, and we knew something about plants and animals. Now we don’t, by and large. So this course hopes to give people the motivation to reconnect with the landscape around them."

Susan Ashley '03 stares up at a red oak's branches. Photo by Justin Ide.

* * * * *

Foster leads students onto the frozen surface of Harvard Pond.

"What do you see?"

A snow-covered mound near an island of trees. He directs their gaze back toward shore.

A splash of orange at the base of a tree.

Foster shows students how to assemble a meaningful landscape from disparate clues. The crystallized snow at the peak of the mound means there are beavers inside, their moist breath interacting with the cold air at the mound’s opening. The gnawed tree on shore is a further sign of their presence. The branches sticking up out of the ice, near the lodge, is the beavers’ food supply, gathered before the pond froze over.

Foster plows toward shore. The students hurry after him.

By late afternoon, the forest has begun to darken and the snow hangs in sodden glops on the trees. The class pauses in a grove of hemlocks 200 years old.

By now, they can identify hemlock, beech, black gum, spruce, oak, maple, two types of pine, and four types of birch. They can read tree shapes and tree types for stories of the woods’ past: clear-cutting, continuous forest, species succession. They know that much of the New England landscape was cleared for farming up to the mid-19^th century. When the Industrial Revolution drew farmers away, toward cities, the Midwest, or the promise of gold in California, the farmland reverted to forest.

They are also learning about their own endurance. Their corduroys and jeans are wet and cold, and their feet, some in non-waterproof hiking boots, have begun to hurt.

They hike back to the Harvard Forest guesthouse for dinner.

Michael Ovadia treks up a hill in the woods outside of New Salem, Mass. Photo by Justin Ide.

* * * * *

Students in the Seminar collectively plan, shop for, and make their own meals, on a fixed budget.

Dinner Friday had been a carefully cooperative affair – strangers discovering the snags and smooth places of each others’ personalities.

Saturday, after their day in the forest, the students are looser and wilder. They belt out "Puff, the Magic Dragon" while they chop onions, eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers for chili. Page McClean and Nate Fay segue into "Hey! You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away," lock arms, and swing each other around at the finale. Out in the dining room, Scott Fruhan, a vocal meat-eater among many vegetarians, surprises everyone by folding the paper napkins into flowers whose petals droop over the lips of the water goblets.

Around 10:30, sounds of singing float up to the guesthouse from the snowy lane. Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, and amber waves of grain. . . . Several of the students belong to singing groups, and now their melodies fracture, diverge pleasingly.

They’re singing harmony.

Students make dinner at the Harvard Forest guesthouse. They collectively plan, shop for, and make their own meals on a fixed budget. Photo by Justin Ide.

* * * * *

Sunday morning, the class explores what Foster calls the cultural landscape, where man’s interactions with nature have taken more obvious forms.

They visit the last working farm in Petersham, where the smell of silage hangs heavy in the air and Holsteins stare from their pens. They walk down Maple Lane, where farmers have planted sugar maples along the road for easy tapping.

On the last leg of the trip, near the town of New Salem, the class plunges back into the woods, sinking knee-deep and rising, till the trees part for a panoramic view.

Below them lies Quabbin Reservoir, a lake created in the 1930s by disbanding four towns and flooding the resulting plain. The Quabbin provides roughly 70% of Massachusetts’ water supply. It and its surrounds have also become home to the largest eagle population in southern New England, as well as moose, bears, and possibly cougars.

The students climb on a picnic table and look out at the frozen lake and its man-made islands; the stands of hemlock and white pine at the horizon; the paper birch, oak, and red maple on this side of the reservoir.

Man and nature have become so intertwined that it’s hard to say what’s "natural" anymore. Conservation advocates fall into different camps, Foster says. Those who want farmland to "return to nature" – revert to forest – threaten the survival of species that grew dependent on open fields and meadows. Those who want to protect the land in its current state essentially require continuous human intervention to maintain that condition.

All of the students seem serious about engaging with these issues. Page McClean says, "There’s more to the land than mere utility. I’m not very religious, but I think if I did worship something, it would and should be the land."

Jessica Ross, who has already done extensive research on streams and ponds, says, "I want to pass something on – a way of thinking, or maybe there’s something I could do in science that would aid the environmental science process in the future."

"I’d like some green out there someday," she says. "I really appreciate nature and I can’t imagine my future without it."

The students take a final look at the scene before them, jump off the table, and begin hiking back through the woods.

David Foster shows students a common juniper, found under a white pine tree. Photo by Justin Ide.