WINDOW

ART IN The FOG
As a morning fog shrouds the giant sequoia at
the north end of campus, Assistant Professor
Cynthia Camlin’s Art students practice drawing
the tree’s gnarled trunk and writhing limbs.
The 69-year-old tree at the southwest corner
of Edens Hall is the largest on campus by
total volume, at 120 feet tall and 26 feet in
circumference at the trunk. The tree can be
seen throughout Bellingham each holiday
season, when WWU decorates it with lights.
It was planted in 1941 by Dr. Irving Miller, a
longtime chair of what was then known as the
Department of Education and Psychology.
WWU’s campus is home to many notable trees,
inspiring retired Geology Professor Myrl Beck
to write the WWU Campus Tree Tour. Among
the stops on Beck’s tour: the 100-year-old
Norway Maples in front of Old Main, a rare
Empress Tree that “erupts in spring with spectacular
blue-purple, trumpet-shaped flowers,”
and a Bigleaf Magnolia that in the 1970s
graced the yard of a “rustic little house” before
it was surrounded by a WWU parking lot.
Read more about WWU’s campus trees at
www.wwu.edu/treetour.
2 WINDOW • Fall 2010 • Western Washington University
www.wwu.edu/window
Photo by Matthew Anderson (‘06) 1