Finding fairies at the Cliff Trail

Exploring maine: Considering ability and accessibility, on campus and beyond

This Monday morning, I drove 10 minutes from Bowdoin to Thomas Point Beach, armed with a late-season apple I picked at Rocky Ridge Orchard the weekend before. What better way to start the week than scampering down wide wooden stairs, flopping in sand so warm it feels like August, not October and watching the shadows of minnows darting over the ocean floor?
Two Mondays ago was the opening of a photo exhibit about the experiences of Bowdoin students with disabilities. Walking into a packed Lamarche Gallery and seeing my face on the wall was momentarily surreal. Living with what is called an “invisible disability” rarely puts me under the public eye. But living with any type of disability means a constant reevaluating of spaces and places: navigating accessibility.
Everyone moves through space with certain capabilities. I can run down the steps at Thomas Point Beach. I can flop in the sand with the delightful mix of confidence and carelessness that signifies comfort and ease. Some other people can run for exercise or take long plane rides without the relief of Tylenol, which are not options for me. Accessibility is wavelike and mutable; everyone’s specific abilities lead them to find different spaces and places easier or harder to navigate, and what we find accessible can and will change.
Before continuing I want to note that I am privileged to have insurance that covers not only routine doctor’s visits, but also the tens of thousands of dollars worth of medication I take each year. This dependence represents a sometimes forgotten way in which this election will impact so many lives. Trump’s misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia and climate change denial are frightening, and his healthcare policies and extreme ableism represent another enormous potential harm to people with disabilities and chronic conditions. T-2 weeks to Election Day.
My current medication increases my quality of life, but it is also a powerful immunosuppressant, which leaves me vulnerable to the kinds of communicable diseases that flourish when we return from breaks. I am unable to travel through any regions with a possible threat of yellow fever, including 43 countries in South America and Africa. Accessibility can be local and global, personal and communal.
At Bowdoin, we should hold each other accountable for questions of accessibility on all levels. Will every space be accessible for every person? Likely not. Can we thoughtfully utilize places and change spaces to make them navigable to as many people as possible? Yes.
A few years ago, hiking Tumbledown over Fall Break would have been out of the question for me. Perched atop its peak, I saw swathes of red and umber, autumnal hills spilling down to Webb Lake. Tucked by the ascending path, Tumbledown Pond reflected blue sky and yellow trees in a splendor of complementary colors. The memory of scrambling up the rocky, leaf-sprinkled path is a dear reminder that mobility is not a given in my life—my own narrative of accessibility in my connection to places.
It’s easy to assign our own abilities to other people, to overlook that one person may need extra time to read and process work for a group project, while for another person the meeting location might pose a challenge. Having a broader conversation about ability at Bowdoin will also help us understand one another and give students with disabilities space to advocate for themselves and their stories.
But my story is not everyone’s story. Climbing Tumbledown or visiting Thomas Point are very different issues from climbing the stairs to the top floor of a College House. Basic accessibility should not be a privilege, but an individual right—one our community must push itself to reflect upon. As Bowdoin students, we can look out for one another and provide space for community and personal advocacy. We can open the conversation about accessibility and ability and, in doing so, engage more deeply with the personal needs people have for the spaces and places we share.

Exploring maine

Finding fairies at the Cliff Trail

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

September 30, 2016

This week I’m writing from my bed (shout out to everyone who’s suffering from the change-of-season plague), where I’ve been embroidering a dishcloth and blowing my nose and trying to keep the two activities separate. Sickness can bring a period of welcome relaxation—a brief lapse in responsibility—but it can also be a cage.

We speak frequently, here, about the Bowdoin bubble and the forces that draw us inward and keep our attention focused on the little everyday Bowdoin issues. That bubble is usually seen negatively—an invisible wall that keeps students from having to engage with what lies on the other side. Like from a sickroom, Bowdoin students can express a desire for escape.

So, we leave campus, sometimes fleeing to Little Dog and sometimes farther. Get in a car and drive down Harpswell Road. Turn left at Schoolhouse Café. Press your nose against the window as you cross over a glinting field of mudflats ringed by faraway pines. Park behind the unromantic Harpswell Town offices and follow the obliging signage to the Cliff Trail. Enter a new world.

Light falls on the loamy pine needles like paint off the tip of a Pollock brush. The forest is rare congruity, all greens and soft browns and the effervescent gold of September sun. The Cliff Trail, one of Harpswell’s most popular destinations, wanders for two and a half miles through the woods, peaking at a lookout over a 150-foot cliff that drops down to the tidal ripples of Long Reach. There are few sounds but the occasional footstep and the determined rustling of aspens, and few smells but the richness of earth and the sweetness of pine.

Where that rich earth forms welcoming hollows and meets with sturdy tree roots, you can find the fairy houses. Constructed by obliging humans of all ages (if we don’t build the fairies homes, where will they live?) from twigs and curling birch bark and detached mosses, the fairy house zones are nurtured by the town under the endowment of a mysterious benefactress named Lindsey Perkins.

Last Sunday, couched in pillows of newly fallen leaves, I helped build a little fairy house, complete with two Adirondack-style chairs in the front, so the fairies could enjoy the patches filtering over their garden. For a few hours, readings and dinner plans and even the terror of Trump were eclipsed by a literal vacation to fairyland.

A change in scenery can shift everything: a day from mediocre to marvelous, a mindset from the past to the future, a relationship from unsure to cemented. And those changes in scenery can be additive. One Bowdoin world can be so much bigger than campus, and at the end of four years it’s likely that no two will look the same. Every mental map exists in endless Venn diagrams of shared nights in Hatch and solo bike rides to Simpson’s Point. In that context, the Bowdoin bubble becomes ever-expanding.

My personal Bowdoin world, infected by strep, is an unwelcome destination right about now, although my roommate did ask if she could see the white spot in my throat. So I’m staying home, staying in place, taking some time to heal and do old-fashioned needlework. But I’m happy to know that the elasticity of my place-based experience has stretched to include a tiny house with a birch bark chimney which may not survive the winter, but which made my week invincible.

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