A Hawk's Eye View of Harvard

As I returned home to Quincy House a few nights ago, I saw a large skunk scurry across Plympton Street right in front of me. It darted out the back of Hillel, ran across the pavement and disappeared under a car parked on the far curb. The skunk stopped me dead in my tracks--I figured it wouldn't attack unless provoked. But it was more than just fear of fumigation that quickened my pulse. The sight of such wildness, incongruous against the backdrop of red-brick Georgian houses, unsettled me in a way I can't completely describe. Why would a skunk go for a moonlight jog through Harvard's campus?

I would have soon forgotten this incident had I not seen something equally unusual the next day. Walking through the Yard on my way to section, I saw a wide circle of people standing near Thayer Hall. At the center of the circle sat an enormous red-tailed hawk, clutching a dead squirrel between its talons. I braved the cold weather for nearly half an hour to watch this beautiful, strange bird. One woman snuck closer to take pictures with a telephoto lens; another bystander filmed the al fresco meal with a video camera.

With two flaps of its wings, the hawk suddenly took off and roosted in an elm. After a few minutes, I began to notice that the squirrels in nearby trees had ceased their usual pitter-patter. They pressed themselves tightly against the bark, utterly motionless, tensed against a predator they could sense but could not see. An ancient dance between predator and prey was being performed; with the exception of our little crowd, the hurrying students and tourists were oblivious to the drama.

In and of themselves, these anecdotes are nothing special. At this very moment, animals are eating each other all over the world. What struck me as unique was the way the crowd watched this spectacle, completely transfixed, unwilling to leave in spite of the freezing weather. What does it say about Harvard, if the sight of a skunk or feasting bird elicits such a strong reaction? What kind of environment do we live in, if the slightest incursion of nature can draw a crowd of onlookers?

It's easy to ignore the frantic, life-and-death struggle that surrounds us. We fancy ourselves as inhabitants of the ivory tower, but in reality we live among the same trees, birds and bugs as everyone else. Not too long ago, when these proud academic vistas were all pasture land and swamp, it would have been difficult to walk to class without seeing a cow or hayrick.

Harvard's place names attest to this once bucolic setting: the Yard used to actually be a "yard," Cambridge Common a shared pasture where sheep and cattle were grazed. As Harvard matured, red brick replaced the briars, and asphalt smothered up the asphodels. But in spite of the modernization, a modest ecosystem still survives. It cycles away out of sight, invisible, until a hawk swoops down and jolts us from our reverie.

The skunk and hawk remind me of how odd our college life is. We religiously obey our codes of dress and comportment, worry about social dynamics too subtle for any sociologist, as though the laws that govern our behavior here were binding in every possible universe. We become completely blind to the nature that teems around us, our eyes glued to the narrow path ahead.

Like the ancient Chinese, we believe that we inhabit the "middle kingdom"--everything that happens at Harvard is of the greatest importance, and everything above or below it is terra incognita. The population of this tiny kingdom consists solely of 18 to 22-year-olds. It has no gross national product; it knows no war or famine or natural disasters. Every year the kingdom banishes its eldest citizens, yet somehow manages to survive from generation to generation. How strange this all is, and how much like Paradise it seems! You taste the bitter fruit of Knowledge, and four years later you're expelled from the garden forever.

The poet Philip Larkin calls this atmosphere "the unreal life/Of exercises, marks, honor, speech days and games,/And the interesting and pretty animals that inspired it all." It's no wonder that a real animal can so unsettle us. The rare, wild beasts of the Yard remind us that there's world outside of Harvard. Beyond the classes and parties and grad-school acceptances, another life awaits. Like the skunk and hawk, we'll have to forage for our food instead of having it handed to us. But this world needn't frighten us so long as we acknowledge its existence.

In the eye of the hawk, Harvard students are just another part of the landscape. The Science Center, with all its high-tech laboratories, is merely a good place for roosting. The towering ledges of Widener are remarkable only for their pigeons. Students may come and go but the squirrels will remain. Though this academic world is wonderful, it's not the only one we can inhabit. Once we gain the hawk's perspective, we can realize that there are kingdoms vaster than our own.

Joshua Derman '99 is a philosophy concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.