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Exploring maine: Looking at nature as an antidote for the cold winter season
This week was the first snowfall in Brunswick, always the most welcomed. December has a way of wiping everything clean, as if the very environment is preparing for the New Year’s proverbial clean slate. This New Year feels shaky; our next semester and my final semester at Bowdoin will begin as our country begins a new chapter, a slate that feels dirty before it’s even arrived.
The Maine winter changes our ability to interact with our environment and marks an enormous (if oft-despised) part of what makes this place what it is. The cold and the snow are some of the most common topics any non-Mainer will raise with a Bowdoin student, and we’ve all probably spent about a cumulative week of our Bowdoin experience bemoaning the weather—because it was 25 degrees last night, and I wear a coat when it’s 65.
On Monday as the snow fell like a slow exhalation, I went to the Commons to take a walk. Not yet icy but already sparkling, the paths are familiar and new again. Stopping with my friend by the pond, he threw dead branches against the slushy ice to watch it splatter with satisfying cracks.
The pine branches are dressed in layers of crystal, the bare twigs of deciduous trees white-capped like tiny waves. Shake them hard and the snow will explode into flurries before trembling down to settle on the ground.
My Maine winters come in contrast to 18 years of Brooklyn winters, with their rare moments of stillness amongst the grey slush and the immediate sweat upon stepping from the cold streets into the heated subway cars. New York winters are ice skating in the parks and scurrying to coffee shops; they are as cozy and crowded as the city can be. They’re also grimy.
My Maine winters have been wearing sweaters and two coats and at least two hand-knit scarves to hustle across campus and burst into a building to finally feel the blood rushing back into my face. They have been running out onto the frozen ice at Simpson’s Point with the same giddy feelings that bubble while swimming there in the summer. They have been waking in the dark of 5:30 a.m. to drive to Popham and watch the sun stretch up and out over the untouched swathes of snow reaching the foam on the beach.
Winter is also the exploration of inward places, the mornings spent watching snow through the window and just staying inside, the nights doing homework huddled under blankets because your off-campus house has “horsehair” insulation (which doesn’t seem to do much insulating at all). Winter is both the squirrels conserving energy in their drays and the dogs ploughing wildly through the snow on the quad.
Finding the ways to connect and commune with this place in its literal darkest times has brought a stability and cyclicality to my time at Bowdoin. Also, after visiting Texas in July and realizing that oppressive heat makes it just as impossible to be outside for longer than five minutes as the cold does, I’m trying to see even the temperature as an equal part of the whole season.
No matter the season, and even no matter the turmoil of that particular season, I think nature can be an antidote—even if that antidote is best taken from inside a cozy house. The ingrained symbolism of seasons is not lost on my cosmological sentimentality as fall becomes winter, which looks forward to spring.
This winter will be marked by uncertainty and fear and radical changes. I want it to also be marked with the reaffirmation of the determined beauty of the natural world, and as much good, old-fashioned playing in the snow as my toes can take.
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Exploring maine: Exploring activism in Brunswick and beyond: our places as political spaces
Our sense of place may be seen as inherently connected to our physical location, but at the same time, we are connected to innumerable places at any given moment, regardless of where we are. I usually write about my explorations of Maine’s beautiful coast—my search for connections in the pebbly serenity of my adopted home state. But over the past week and a half, I have been compelled to reevaluate my sense of place within the historical and present political context of physical and emotional safety in Brunswick.
A presidential election radically shifts our sense of place from the micro to the macro: we become not just Bowdoin students or New Yorkers but residents of the U.S. We become aware not just of the people within our communities but the people living in the remarkably different communities, from this small town on the Atlantic to across the country on the Pacific.
From coast to coast, the U.S. has not recently been a safe place for an incredible number of its residents. It has been some time since we have had a major political leader who normalizes vitriolic language and has built a campaign on the exclusion and hatred of groups of people, but racism—and classism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia, ableism and xenophobia—are American realities and have been American realities throughout national history. To overlook this history in the face of new political concerns is to overlook the generations of people who have been fighting and waiting and struggling.
Here in our Brunswick microcosm, within the first week following the election, I heard stories about aggressive harassment over Hillary Clinton bumper stickers, conflicts between students and town residents and schoolchildren yelling racial slurs out of school bus windows. But in the United States macrocosm, these instances are neither novel nor one-off.
During my three and a half years at Bowdoin, there have been explicit reports of racism, homophobia and sexism manifested through language and violence—not to mention the innumerable moments that go unreported and affect people of so many identities. There was a violent homophobic altercation on Maine Street and many cases of sexual violence, harassment and rape. Within the past year alone, three explicit acts of racial bias occurred on campus. Discrimination, marginalization and fear for personal safety are not new to this place, but neither is the fight and the struggle that many are beginning to participate in for the first time. Privilege—white privilege—is never so clear as when people begin to experience fear for the first time, without realizing that their neighbors, friends and classmates have been experiencing fear—and fighting against discrimination—for their entire lives.
This week, I’m not going to visit any beautiful Maine locations (although that respite is one that everyone should still take, and I could write pages upon pages about my fears and griefs regarding Trump’s environmental policies and the potential for literal destruction of this place I love so dearly). Instead, I’m planning to attend on-campus events about experiences of discrimination, go to Portland for community meetings and join students who are planning political actions. Those are a few of my own ways to understand how hometowns have become even less safe for so, so many people in the past week and to contextualize my sense of place within that reality.
Caught between the micro and the macro, the awful truths of the past and the terrifying realities of the present “place” takes on new, layered meanings. It holds the memories from which we should learn and possibilities towards which we should look forward. But it also carries the physical and emotional well-being of marginalized people across all identities. It carries the fears of people who are being told that places, from their home towns to the entire U.S., will no longer be open to them. As a white woman living with chronic illness, I am looking for ways in which I can continue to be a better ally, a better listener and a better fighter, for everyone experiencing marginalization who have always been fighting. For me, it’s not about making our country great again, but making our places safe—finally.
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Exploring maine: Deepening connection to Portland through Alternative Winter Breaks
Bowdoin brought me to Brunswick, to Little Dog, to Simpson’s Point and afternoons on the Quad. The streets of this small town became familiar and quotidian—the experiences that come with residence. But Bowdoin has also brought me to places much farther from the images in the college brochure. Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Myrtle Beach—away from Maine, but related to my time at Bowdoin nonetheless. Even my semester in Granada, Spain, feels inherently tied to my Bowdoin experience.
Despite having a campus you can walk across in about seven minutes, Bowdoin is a fluid, expanding space. College is tied to the people you meet and the places those people bring you. I’ve taken numerous friends on their first tours around New York City and encouraged classmates to go to the Maine beaches I went to as a child. Places and communities are tangled and those intertwining relationships stretch like tin-can telephones from childhood homes to Gelato Fiasco and the top of Mount Katahdin to all the places we will move after we graduate.
Some of these links mean more than others. Some places will always belong to someone you love. Others will carry the sour taste of a meal made awkward by a friend’s sexist grandpa. But a few of my most important Bowdoin journeys are unforgettable primarily because of what I learned through living, if only briefly, in a brand new place.
I went on Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trips my first and second years at Bowdoin. My first year I went to Atlanta, Georgia. and participated in a trip that focused on immigrant detention and the experiences of refugees in Atlanta. My second trip went to the Passamaquoddy reservation at Pleasant Point, where I have spent time every year at Bowdoin. These trips were undoubtedly formative: not service trips in any typical definition of that term, but rather unique group experiences of learning from individuals and organizations about the issues they face and hopes they have for their own communities.
This past Sunday, 10 women gathered in the McKeen Center common room for the first meeting of the Alternative Winter Break (AWB) trip I am leading with my friend Harriet. Our trip, focused on Reproductive Justice, aims to engage many of the questions that my past ASB groups grappled with. Conversations surrounding privilege, injustice, community engagement, intersectionality and allyship lie at the core of most Alternative Break (AB) trips, regardless of topic or location.
So Harriet and I gathered our trip members together with trepidation and excitement and led them through a name game and discussion. We are clinging to the hope that we will be able to foster a thoughtful and engaged microcosmic community around our trip issue, a community that will be able to bring that thoughtfulness and engagement out of the McKeen Center and into places that are not on a typical holiday destination list. Typical holiday trips are usually with family or close friends—ABs are not, on the surface, about friendship (although friendships will hopefully be formed) but bring students from differing campus spheres into a shared space.
Unlike many of the ASB trips, the AWB participants live on campus and the trips stay in the Midcoast area. Our trip will be visiting the Portland Planned Parenthood, the Maine Trans*Net and the Maine ACLU, among other community partners. Harriet and I have a scripted seminar syllabus, a schedule for our trip and eight wonderful participants—now we’re hoping, through connection to people and connection to issues, to create a new connection to place among our group members.
I am excited for my experience of Portland to expand beyond Otto’s and the Old Port and to spend a week on this campus I know so well with only a few other people, focusing on rarely had conversations about sexual health and safety and access to reproductive care for people of all identities.
Bowdoin has connected me to multitudinous places. This winter, I look forward to the opportunity to reshape my connection to a few of these places—to remember to look a little deeper, and ask a few more questions and try to understand more thoughtfully and holistically the diversity of experiences walking on the streets around me in Midcoast Maine.
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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.
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Exploring maine: Finding fairies at the Cliff Trail
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.