LIVING AT UNITY – An Experience of Cycles in Sync with Nature
What is it like to live at Unity College? You can’t live well at Unity unless you are willing to meld with the landscape. You can’t know Unity until you’re ready to walk the fields and hills, get on your bike and explore the back roads, swim in the lakes, snowshoe through the woodlot, get up early, and admire the sunrise. You have to let the landscape enter you, permeate your thinking, guide your moods and spirit, and take you through the day.
Consider a day in the life of several senior administrators. Gary Zane, the dean for student affairs and Amy Knisley, the senior vice president for academic affairs, and I have many interests and pursuits in common. Above all, we tend to get restless around noontime. At that point, we’ve been at our desks far too long, attended one meeting too many, and we crave the outdoor life. Depending on the season we hop on our bikes or take out our snowshoes, and give ourselves an hour to explore the landscape. That’s one of the most important ways we’ve come to live at Unity.
At 5 a.m. during hunting season, you can hear the pick-up trucks rumbling. The early morning hunters are getting ready to roam the woods so they can get back in time for morning classes. On weekends, students scramble to organize their backpacks, climbing gear, and sleeping bags for their next outing. At any time, you can see students and faculty loading a van with lab equipment, preparing to take a measurement in a Pleistocene bog, or a nearby lake.
But don’t habits and routines such as these model good practice for how to live anywhere? I can’t imagine any other way of dwelling. Immerse yourself in the weather. Go out in a storm. Walk the city streets. Learn about the flora and fauna, explore the landscape, and see all aspects of your neighborhood.
If you ask students to discuss their most important Unity College experience, they will inevitably link it to an outdoor setting, whether it was the source of adventure or endurance, the object of scientific inquiry, or the basis for a creative essay or piece of art. That’s what they most remember about Unity. That’s what is most important about living here.
Mitchell Thomashow
President, Unity College
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