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Why I Love Bryn Mawr
By Jessica Blucher '05 Sage Staff WriterI first fell in love with Bryn Mawr when I saw the brochure at a college fair. The truth is, I had never even heard of Bryn Mawr before I walked over to the table. But on that fateful evening, when I looked at that brochure, I was smitten. Everything looked so green; the buildings were so lovely. True, looks are not everything, but I was so taken by the beauty of all the greenery and the collegiate gothic scheme of the campus that I fell in love nearly at first sight.
To understand where I come from, you should know about where I live. When I am not at school, I live in San Antonio, where we live in a nearly perpetual state of drought, except for the occasional 'big flood'. At home, the grass is yellow to brown most of the time, save the rarest patches of green, and most of the trees are stunted, although there is the occasional tall tree that is nearly antediluvian. To see large expanses of dark green grass in both hills and miniature meadows, as well as tall, sturdy trees, caused me to become enamored at first glance with Bryn Mawr.
In the fall, the leaves on Bryn Mawr campus change into a glorius rainbow of warm colors and shades of green. In the spring, cherry blossoms fill the sidewalks as the petals are coaxed off by the gentle, warm seasonal breezes. The tall, graceful, and almost stern looking collegiate gothic buildings beckoned to me. I wanted a college that was graceful with age, not despite it, a place that had the sort of look and feel that could transport me back to a time long passed. I wanted a school rich with tradition: a place where the fun of classes long ago graduated was still continued enthusiastically by even the newest of its members.
If you look around campus, you can see that most of the buildings, if not actually as old as the college itself, tend to blend in with the general gothic look. Probably the Campus Center is not nearly as old as Pembroke, but it has the same sort of look and feel that makes me want to believe that it has seen just as many seasons pass.
There are gargoyles on some of the buildings, and owls and other sorts of animals carved into others. Then there are things like the moon bench. Some people donated money for a bench between Guild and Denbigh in memory of their friend. There are wooden benches donated in memory or in honor of various persons all over campus. I find this an especially nice gesture because these people gave money so that someone would be remembered or honored. Because of this, we have places to sit, enjoy nature, and rest a bit.
Of all the interesting things on campus, two things that I saw while touring struck me as incredibly cool. One was the tree poetry. If you don't know what I'm talking about, walk up to a tree somewhere on the main part of campus, and see if it has a plaque attached to it. It normally has one that says what kind of tree it is, and then a bit of poetry or a quote, that mentions that sort of tree. The other thing was the signposts that you can find on campus. They point out interesting fauna or things like the labyrinth.
According to one of the BMC grounds websites, there is a list of what are called the "special gardens" of Bryn Mawr. There is an astonishingly large amount of gardens listed. Some of the familiar ones included are The Cloisters, Taft Garden, Sunken Garden, the Haffner Courtyard, The Labyrinth, and the Guild Hall Sunken Courtyard. However, there are also some others listed that you may not know the names of, or you may not even know of their existence. There is the Mary E. Daubenspeck Memorial Spring House behind Wyndham House. There is the Erdman Overlook between Erdman Hall & Wyndham House. There is the Rhoads Valley Pond (Do they call that a garden?). There is the Hobson-Pittman Overlook on the hill above the Lower Athletic field and down from the Multi-Cultural Center. There is the Drabkin Garden at the Campus Center. There is the English House Walled Garden. There is the Jane Unkefer Honorary Garden adjacent to the Wyndham House Patio.
The Park Science Sunken Courtyard is one place that I did not even realize was a garden. Another is Goodhart Sunken Garden. And then there're others like the Gardiner, Oppenheimer, Albert Memorial Native Wildflower Meadow, just to the West of the walkway from Canaday Library to Schwartz Gymnasium. I did not know that was cultivated. I had no idea that those were wildflower meadows. But now that I do, I think it is a lovely idea. Of course, there is the Butterfly Berm and the Bluebird Bank near the Athletic Fields as well. What amazes me is how beautiful each and every one of these locales is, and how they each classify as a garden.
Most people only think of Taft Garden, or maybe the Sunken Garden, but you can see that BMC Grounds works hard to keep this campus looking beautiful in many places so that more people can fall in love with it, just the way I did. Seasons will change, students will come in and graduate, and Bryn Mawr, in all of its ancient and majestic glory, will continue to transport students to a time long ago--filling them with awe and capturing their hearts--all the while moving ahead in full bloom.
