A Walk in the Woods

A W a l k i n t h e W o o d sThe College Seems to Be Raising Its Crum ConsciousnessBy Susan Milius ’75Illustrations by Barbara Seymour ’63Roger Latham ’83, whothinks a lot aboutsuch matters, hasoffered a tour of some of themost important parts of theCrum Woods.I should be contemplatingthe nature of importance, butit’s Friday, it’s sunny, and it’sa perfect unwind-in-thewoodsafternoon. I findmyself wondering how thelate James Michener ’29would begin a sweeping epiccalled “Crum.”He could certainly reach back to the17th century, when Swedes put up a fortnot far away on Tinicum Island, andadventurous souls started settling alongthe creek. Today’s name for it reportedlydescends from their Cromkill or Crumkill,meaning “crooked creek.” But why limitthe action to the paltry centuries sinceEuropean arrival? Pennsylvania statearchives refer to earlier residents: the“Ockanickon” tribe.Or why not go for the full Michenertreatment, with swirling plasma lumpinginto a planet with eons of geologic wrinkling and crackling on itssurface? He’d have a fair diversity of landscape to explain, as today’smostly mild-mannered creek slides by swamps, meadows, and steephills. I check College holdings on Roger’s map. The 140 woodedacres on the main campus crawl northward from the Yale Avenuebridge in the shape of a pudgy inchworm.Roger, however, skips Michener’s Big Bang and jumps to a modernBig Oops.He taught plant ecology at the College during the late ’90s, and,before he resigned to do environmental consulting, he analyzed theCrum’s importance as a teaching resource and a biological community.He found that easily a dozen faculty members, from artists tozoologists, send from 150 to 300 students each year into the woodsfor class projects.Roger identified six patches of particular ecological interest—just the start of a list, he says (see map, page 20). These gemsAsk anybody who spenttime at Swarthmore, andthey have memories of theCrum—some sunny andsome dark.deserve particular attention,but if the College’s woods areto keep their biological valuefor teaching, the place needsmore protection from the illsof surrounding development.“Crum Woods are a pricelessfacility for education that isbeing allowed to deteriorateneedlessly,” Roger says. Hispoint: This is one lab thatcan’t be replaced. If bad managementlets it degrade, theCollege can’t build anotherCrum.“I didn’t really think anybody wouldread my report for months,” Roger says. Injust a few days, however, Larry Schall ’75,College vice president for facilities andservices, phoned.Larry, too, had been analyzing thecampus and the Crum as part of an overallstrategy for planning for new facilities thatthe College will almost certainly need inthe future. He was considering a proposal—sinceabandoned—to move some athleticfields to the far side of the creek andmake them accessible by a foot bridge.When they talked, Roger found that the bridge might be placedatop one of his six gems.Larry, of course, had not declared war on ecologically valuablewetlands and did understand the teaching value of the woods.Some of his own formative experiences with fluid dynamics camefrom Professor Alburt Rosenberg’s “Physics for Poets” class excursionsto watch leaves floating down the creek. Larry and Roger simplyfound an alternative place to put a footbridge, should anyonedecide to build one.This incident, among others, inspired a new committee to makesure right hands knew what left hands were up to and that allhands would shake on it. Several long-term advocates for the Crumhave joined the effort, now chaired by Arthur McGarity, an environmentalengineering professor who has been sending students tostudy the creek’s water quality for the past 15 years. The Collegeseems to be raising its Crum consciousness considerably.M A R C H 2 0 0 117