Trees and Dead Trees

These days I spend lots of time walking between the dorm, Foster Hall (on the left) and my classrooms in the Hall of Science (on the right). I make at least three roundtrips a day and have begun to understand why Drew is nicknamed 'The Forest'. Most days I pass a (perhaps too) tame doe with her two tiny fawns, a baby racoon that seems fond of a particular tree, and a hawk that I watched teach her baby to fly this past Wednesday. The Forest is beautiful.

And yet as I walk I also spend a lot of time looking down, trying not to step on all the caterpillars that are all over. Like much of this part of New Jersey, the Forest is being infested with gypsy moths and Drew personnel are worried about whether or not the old oaks are going to survive through the summer.

This afternoon I'm off to a theological library orientation. It's supposed to show us the organization of the 'dead trees', which is what Drew's librarian calls books. The term startled me when he first used it. I never thought of books first and foremost in those terms and it seemed especially startling coming from a librarian. I guess, though, that the forest theme appears everywhere on this campus.