One of my favorite places on campus is the Ravine. If you’ve looked into Lewis and Clark at all you’ve probably seen pictures of a beautiful bridge on campus. This bridge goes across a natural ravine that separates the academic and residential parts of campus. The ravine is relatively small and you’d barely even notice it if all you do is walk the bridge on your way to class. But I’ve come to really love our little backyard forest. I go there to eat lunch, to take walks at night, to take naps in a hammock.
One evening my boyfriend and I were meeting at the bridge. It was cold and foggy, but I could still see down into the Ravine. That's when we saw something swoop down onto a tree branch about fifty yards away. It turned its head to look at us and my heart leaped. It was a barred owl. The one whose call sounds like “who cooks for you?”. We had been hearing its call for a few weeks at that point, but this was the first time we’d seen it. We continued to watch it for about fifteen minutes, pointing it out to people who walked by, before it flew off into the woods.
One of the most exciting aspects of the Ravine is the easy access for field research. I have used it on multiple occasions to collect samples or watch a spider. It’s so close to campus that it makes for easy access to natural samples that I’ve used in classes on multiple occasions. It is also a unique ecosystem in that it is neither human developed or pure wilderness. It represents similar urban wildernesses all around the Pacific North West.
There are all kinds of hidden secrets in the Ravine; the painted trees (very underwhelming), the devil shrine, the tire swing, to name a few. It being on campus means that there are a lot of secrets little places created by students. Walking around it is like a scavenger hunt. Just earlier this week I found ziplock bags attached to a tree with little poems written inside.
The essential benefit of having the ravine on campus is just to have somewhere to escape to nature, even just for a minute between classes.
