Harvard in Bloom: Springtime Stories from The Crimson’s Arts Board

Spring in Cambridge brings picnickers along the Charles River, students in sundresses tanning on College House lawns, and tourists flocking to an ever more verdant Harvard Yard. With spring break concluded, flowers blooming, and Harvard students emerging from the dark crevices of Lamont Library to frolic in the campus’s green spaces, spring at Harvard is a time for memories to be made. Read on for some of The Crimson’s Arts Board’s favorite springtime memories, with picnics, gargoyles, and scooters galore!

The John W. Weeks Footbridge

It’s a short walk across the bridge. During a hurried rush to swim practice, or a chilly, brisk return from the Business School, you walk the 500 feet in less than a minute. You pass the 20 street lamps without a second thought, and each of the three arches go unnoticed beneath your feet. But when February gives way to March and the snow-white Yard slowly returns to its proud, emerald green, the bridge seems to sense the changing seasons and starts to change with them.

Spring turns the 500 foot stretch out from a one-minute walk into five, then 10. Whether you sit by yourself on the railing — legs dangling over the river as you watch the crew team glide by — or you’re in a group of 20, with blankets and snacks filling in the few spots without laughter, life seems to take a break on that limestone. And when the sun goes down, the footbridge offers its final spectacle of the day: a burnt orange sun sinking slowly into the Charles, just in time for the flock of onlookers to stand and admire.

It doesn’t have to be a long walk across the bridge. But as the semester comes to a close and finals approach ever faster, maybe slowing down is just what we need — to give the John W. Weeks Footbridge the few more minutes it deserves, with the peaceful company of the river making its way slowly underneath.

—Staff writer Alessandro M. M. Drake can be reached at alessandro.drake@thecrimson.com.

Gargoyles at Widener Library

When I think of spring at Harvard, I feel the liveliness bursting from Widener Library’s stately stone structure. As 80 degree temperatures populate Cambridge’s weather forecast and delicate buds bloom along Harvard’s trees, hordes of students begin to populate Widener’s facade like gargoyles. The chittering undergraduates clamber to their perches atop the library’s classicizing structure as if it were a Gothic cathedral, creeping out of hibernation to soak up the sun. Clutching a BoardPlus iced coffee, tackling final papers, and sometimes sneering at the tourist passerby below, the giddy grotesques celebrate the removal of Widener’s winter steps and breathe spring life into the formidable granite edifice. Widener’s architecture is suddenly re-animated, valued not merely as a grandiose escape from the elements but as a stone substrate for the blossoming of spring student connection.

—Staff writer Marin E. Gray can be reached at marin.gray@thecrimson.com.

Bikes Along the Charles

Given its rarity, the joy of a warm spring day in Cambridge is truly unparalleled. I can vividly remember eagerly putting on my bike helmet the second the weather rose to 65 degrees, gleefully biking along the Charles River. The sight of sailboats and the blooming of trees signaled that spring was approaching, and the wind in my hair felt euphoric. I biked all the way to Fenway Park, where I stopped to observe the sunset, grateful for daylight savings as I basked in the golden sunset. I couldn’t wait to begin biking every day again.

The next morning, I woke up early for a ride to Mount Auburn Cemetery, where I took a long sunrise walk. The flowers ready to burst open at any moment in all their spring-time glory embodied my feelings of excitement for the warm weather ahead. I was in awe of the flourishing wildlife amidst gravestones and mausoleums: a true union of life and death.

—Staff writer Lola J. DeAscentiis can be reached at lola.deascentiis@thecrimson.com.

Spring Journaling

Sometime during the beginning of freshman year, I started taking note of whenever it felt like I actually went to college here — when it didn’t just feel like a temporary visit or a dream. My longest entry — sitting between items like “realizing I finally memorized the Berg hours” and “playing with glow sticks on the Grays Hall fire escape” — is from the start of spring. It reads:

“This morning the sun finally reached the prisms I hung in my window, for the first time since daylight savings. Had lecture videos to finish but first met up with a couple of friends and a lot more friends of friends in the yard (right where we had Convocation actually) and we threw a frisbee around for a while, finally collapsing on one of the red blankets they gave us on move-in day. Sat down and marveled for a while — at how many people I could wave to as they walked by, how many hours I’d spent passing through the yard this year, how many more I had to go. Dean Khurana came over and took a picture of our eclectic group for his Instagram, captioned it ‘so important to take time to breathe and connect.’ Such a funny day. Hope it wasn’t just fool’s spring.”

—Staff writer Stella A. Gilbert can be reached at stella.gilbert@thecrimson.com.

Scootering Out of Spring

When I moved onto campus for my research position at the end of spring, I encountered a very different Harvard than the one I had spent the winter months in: The trees were lush and green, flowers blooming and verdant, and the Charles River sparkled under a sea of blue sky, a few wispy clouds scattered about. My roommate and I practically skipped to her storage closet, renewed by the sunlight like plants experiencing photosynthesis. As we moved her stuff to our summer dorm in Winthrop, we were delighted to find two scooters, left to us by the previous closet patrons for unlimited use.

We adopted them as our own, and every weekday we scootered to work, zooming down Massachusetts Avenue, through Cambridge Commons, and onto Garden Street, all the way to the Radcliffe Quadrangle. We scootered outside of work too — to Porter Square on the weekends to sample cafes and restaurants, along the river to Trader Joe’s at twilight, and to BerryLine on lazy nights as spring melted into summer.

On one such day, we scootered back over the river, our bags laden with Trader Joe’s bounty. My roommate suddenly leapt onto the sidewalk, scooter clattering to the ground, to lean over the railing and point to the sunset. Tendrils of orange clouds streaked across the sky, the river’s surface a near-perfect mirror of the sky but for tiny ripples that left a shimmering impression on its glassy expanse. For a second, all was still — just us and our scooters between the river below, the sky above, and the world’s beauty within.

—Staff writer Arielle C. Frommer can be reached at arielle.frommer@thecrimson.com.