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The Labyrinth is such a profound and sophisticated place, yet it is only fourteen years old. The profound sophisticated labyrinth is younger than me? I shake my head, "this recent creation just can not reflect the depth of history!"

Talking about history, several words come up into my mind: past, old, far and gone. However, history is never absence from present. History is accumulative. Interestingly, during the Thursday field trip, I realized that the Harriton House is most certainly a good example of how people make history sustainable. What I mean by "an effort that sustain history"" is an action to "ultilize creations derived from the history." The more than three hundred years of history of the Bryn Mawr town is really a wonderful wonderful story to hear. We need some passionate Welsh, some resistance to flood, some wisdom to survive a business and a lot more to be here at a College grounded on a piece of land that Native Americans gave up the "right to use". This is enough to make the 1704 Harriton House amazing and adorable. One thing I consider to be important in historical sustainability is adaptation. As we preserve historic site, it's crucial to keep in mind that things always change.

I couldn't help but feel the cover of the book Offending Women was most relevant to my paper; the face of the child who has been incarcerated alongside his mother. In my memo, I focused on the way in which the needs and voices of the children and family of those who are incarcerated are impacted and overshadowed by their relation to a person who has been imprisoned. I look at some of the ways in which they too have become incriminated into the same system

                After visiting the Harriton house Thursday, I decided to approach this week’s serendip posting from a more “historical” standpoint. That is, what did my spot next to the pond behind Rhodes look like 100 years ago? In order to do this, I also needed to alter my ecological perspective of my place—and effected this alteration through the removal of students and buildings that are now Bryn Mawr College.  Bryn Mawr College was founded 126 years ago, and although some aspects of the college have remained the same, I imagine that things must have been much different back then. I pictured the pond next to where I sat, more carefully kept, without the fence surrounding the perimeter. I could see women in dresses strolling along the hillside, books in hand—maybe engaging in small talk with a peer as she descended down to the edge of the pond. Of course, there are none of the mowers to assail the quiet, and no computers in lieu of a worn, leafed through book. Instead of other academic institutions, I like to picture a more rural surrounding of my place. I can see fields looking past the pond to the left, and can make out the outline of the Harriton farm if I narrow my eyes and look to my right. The air is clean, and laden with the smell of wassail and dry leaves; I can see bursts of crimson and orange scattered across the ground and on the muddy surface of the pond.

I come back here every year.  It is my place in the summertime.  I can already see the maize climbing the hillside.  It will feed my family for many months.  I will take care of this blessing from Mother Earth, as Mother Earth takes care of me.  I turn back to the present day's work.  My family and I must set up our living arrangements before it is too dark.  We keep this cycle going every year, moving from place to place month to month.  I know it will stay the same forever.  Me, my family, and the wilderness season after season.

How was this place once a farm? Now, sitting on the edge of the non-functioning fountain in the cloisters, it seems as though the castle-like building that is Thomas Hall has been there forever, all stone, cold, and medieval. But wait - North America never experienced medieval times like Europe did. So how did this castle design end up on a chunck of what was once a 700-acre farm?

I didn't know that this part of Pennsylvania was originally settled by the Welsh. I was faced with the fact when I realized that Bryn Mawr is not the only peculiar town name around here when I first got here. Still, when the Welsh got land from William Penn, they didn't build castles that resembled the ones in their motherland; in fact, most of them did some kind of farming (usually subsistence).

So, how did Bryn Mawr College's Thomas Hall's architectural style came to be if there were mostly farms around here? I am assuming that Bryn Mawr, like Haverford and Swartmore, was originally founded by Welsh Quakers. They, I presume, wanted to capture a part of the spirit that universities and colleges back in Wales had by mirroring the architectural style and ideas, copying (in a way) a bit of home onto "the new world."

With that realization in mind, I accept the fact that Thomas Hall has not been here for as many centuries as I thought, and the fountain I'm sitting on might once have been a place where sheep lay to sleep, or where wheat was grown. Still, I prefer the cloisters with their "current look" - enchanting.

We talked a lot about sustainability when we were at Harrington House yesterday. Sustainability meant something different when Bruce used it in terms of Harriton House, and when I hung out in my spot afterwards, it made me think of the sustainability of the beech tree that I've been sitting in.

A lot of the trees and deer that are around Harrington House are really abundant now, but they were hardly in the picture when Harriton was built. Even though I sit in a tree every week to observe "nature," I'm really sitting in an arboretum--a pale, human-made replica of what nature "should" look like. I observe a representation of nature, next to a grass lawn, this week with pop music blaring from the athletic fields. Like the "nature" around Harriton House, the tree sit in, and other bits of "nature" on the campus allows the collegiate image of Bryn Mawr to be sustainable.

Like the deer near Harriton, the squirrels that scamper around the college are probably a lot more populous than is "natural." But I still see the squirrels as being a part of nature. I still think that my issues with squirrels reflect a greater problem with animals and anything not molded or consciously protected by humans. Now I just need to figure out what humans have influenced, and what's really supposed to be out there. Or even what "supposed to be" really means.

“You can’t plant in the spring and leave in the summer.” Bruce Grill said at the Harriton House when introducing us to the cluttered community garden (October 2012). “The plants grow everywhere”, Bruce continued. The plants were everywhere indeed. The tomatoes and the squash were mingled together in a corner and some sort of red flowers were hiding among tall grass, which people define as “weeds”. However, isn’t the community garden a great example of “wild gardens” Michael Pollan is talking about in his essay Weeds are Us? People spend too much effort into cultivating an “ideal” garden that always turns out to be too artificial. And no matter how hard people try, nature will always find a way to creep into the fences and make its own wonders. Even on the well-weeded and well-trimmed grass on my site, I find many “intruders”: several cluster of clovers, one dandelion, and other clusters of unknown species.  These aliens managed to escape from the sharp razor that “beheads” the field grass that surrounds them and survive the dreadful potions that are designed to kill “weeds”. Human can’t defy nature. The nature in these clovers and dandelion dictated them to reside on the grass and people can do little about this. “The bees goes whenever they pleases.” said Bruce. I think it is the same thing with gardening. The “weeds” decide to grow in the gardens whenever they please, people can’t simply arrange a garden. 

Anne had shared this piece earlier as a reply to Smacholdt's Thoreauvian (Labyrinth) walk but I just wanted to expose this a bit further and share once again - Jeanne-Rachel Salomon is the creator of the Labyrinth that sits next to the hill in front of Rhoads. She had an interest in Shamanism, cured herself of cancer (not suprisingly) and states, "If one has travelled long enough and the distance between the onset of the journey and the moment of reflection is sufficient, one gains understanding of the journey’s meaning." A frequent visitor of the labyrinth myself, I invite you all to "be and become" more in tune with your lives and take a few moments of reflection and journey through the labyrinth and through life with a renewed awareness.

http://www.brynmawr.edu/alumnae/bulletin/mcbride1.htm#salomon