A few days ago in a window of benevolent weather, my flatmate and I went to see the sunrise over Cambridge from the highest ground in the city: Castle Mound. Not being habitual early risers, we underestimated how early the colors actually begin to paint the sky before the sun is scheduled to show itself. At 7:30 a.m. at the end of January in Cambridge, 20 minutes before sunrise, the day has already eased itself in, and the pink has fanned out through the clouds. We cycled hastily under the luminous sky, sneaking glances at the risk of swerving. At this time of day during a pandemic, there were only a few other cyclists and small accumulations of cars at stoplights. We could ease through the awkward roundabout at Madingley Road and Northampton Street with no problem, chug up Castle Street, lock our bikes and cross traffic-free to the small green hill tucked behind city buildings. I left my winded flatmate behind to hurry up the curving steps and catch the sun.
Grantchester Meadows
When the English poet and Cambridge alumnus Rupert Brooke was homesick and depressed in Germany in 1912, he wrote a nostalgic, light-hearted poem about one of Cambridge’s gems:
. . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester! —
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
…I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .
God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England’s the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of THAT district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
(from “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester”)
Brooke proceeds to comically badmouth every other village in the vicinity of Cambridge based entirely on what insults rhyme with their names.[1] It makes an interesting timepiece, to recognize the names of villages that have now been subsumed as neighborhoods of the City of Cambridge (Madingley, Cherry Hinton, Ditton…). Grantchester, however, is one village that has kept its geographical identity, still tiny and discrete on the banks of the River Cam amidst fields and college sports greens. Nevertheless, it is very closely linked with Cambridge, not least by the steady flow of joggers and dog-walkers along the two-mile footpath that runs beside the River Cam from Cambridge to Grantchester. Much more could be said about Grantchester, the village— its medieval church, its pubs, its tearoom, its namesake detective show I got my family hooked on after witnessing its fourth season being filmed in town—but it’s the path to Grantchester I want to write about for now. The path ambles through the idyllic chain of green where Brooke wanted to lie “flower-lulled in sleepy grass”: Grantchester Meadows.
Hobson’s Conduit and Nine Wells
Waterways have an inherent sense of story—they bring elsewhere to you, following a path with a volition beyond your own, and tacitly invite you to find out where from and where to. Here’s one: Hobson’s Conduit, a stream dug in 1610 from chalk springs out in the fields to the heart of Cambridge, still flowing and steeped in city lore. When a retired Cambridge professor told me about the walk along the Conduit’s length from city center to source at Nine Wells Nature Reserve, I tucked the captivating idea away in my to-walk list. Although I inadvertently walked partway on the inviting public footpath once, it took me a while to pick up the trail again.
Boxing Day 2020: gray and brisk but not raining or freezing; paths still muddy and fields flooded after the storm two days before Christmas. Looking for a way to pass an afternoon with a friend on the first day of renewed Covid lockdown, I suggested the walk to Nine Wells.
Newnham College Garden
A common misconception I encounter when I tell people that I study plant ecology is that I must know all about gardening. In fact, I have to reply, I don’t have much of a green thumb. Ecology isn’t horticulture, and although I love observing plants in their natural habitats and other people’s gardens, I haven’t yet had the space or patience to work out what keeps plants happy in my own plot of soil. I feel vaguely guilty about this—it seems I should have more interest in the real-time lives of plants. And yet my intentions to get into gardening have yet to become more.
So it was both par for the course (albeit in a backwards way) and perhaps a sign when, a few weeks ago, I was stopped in the Newnham Porters Lodge by a passing staff member with a question. She had heard my flatmate and me talking and asked tentatively if we were American, and this may be a strange question but did we know anything about plants? (We had not been talking about plants.) She went on to say that the Development Team were making a video for North American alumnae and they needed American students to help interview the head gardener, ask about American plants, etc; might we be interested? My flatmate was bemused by the fragmented request, but I, although still not entirely sure what she was asking for, said, “Actually, yes, I study plant ecology, and sure, why not?” Followed by the usual caveat about horticulture.
A few days later I got an email from an enthusiastic project director, Beth, who explained the video was a virtual college tour for US and Canada-based alumnae for the 150th College anniversary, and that this was the first project she was directing herself and she was so excited, but wanted to give me an opportunity to say no—but I assured her I was happy to help. Hobnobbing with the head gardener sounded like fun, and in any case, it should make a good story.
Field Notes: Newnham in Autumn
Yesterday brought the first early-morning snow of winter to Cambridge. Having been tipped off by the forecast the day before, I knew what the muffled calls and screams of children meant when they woke me up, even with the curtains closed and my brain still groggy. Within a few hours of sunrise, the half-inch of snow was latticed into slush on the lawns and rooftops, and soon after that, was gone. (Having spent nine Decembers in Idaho, I’m not impressed.)
Today brought near-frozen sunshine, which I’m now watching gather into sunset just after 3 pm. The walnut tree outside my window is all a-crag with empty branches; I can only see a single leaf clinging and waving.
All this is to say that winter is here. So my post today is a tribute to the memory of the glorious autumn I was so unusually intimate with here in Newnham, working at my south-facing window in my college room, taking strolls for breaks. Here are some of my field notes.
Cornucopia: Beechwoods
Up the road over the edge of Cherry Hinton, onto the gentle rise of the Gog Magog Hills and their furrowed hide of fields, and I pull off the shoulder where a quiet leaf-screened path is bisected by the motorway. I’m partway between Cherry Hinton Chalk Pits and Wandlebury Country Park (which will one day have its own blog post), and I’m walking on a fallen giant—by one account, the Gawr Madoc of the Gog Magog Hills, slain by the Trojans, crashing and settling and growing over to create what little relief there is in the flat fenlands of Cambridgeshire. The walk is a long-cut through yellow leaves and autumn-ripened berries to another slice of nature reserve, this one copper-colored and called Beechwoods.
The Secret Life of Cherry Hinton Chalk Pits
Near the edge of Cambridge, in Cherry Hinton, is a stealthy nature reserve. The only hint of the place from the street is the fence threaded with green. That’s not such an uncommon sight in Cambridge, where hedges and trees screen a lot of things from view. These particular barriers don’t seem to hide much—there’s a narrow tangle of trees but no sense of deepening beyond them as you might expect in a nature reserve. Many people, I suspect, zoom past without an inkling that anything is there, as I would have despite attending church less than a block away every week.
But I’ve been tipped off. After church one Sunday I go looking for an entrance, a place to stash my bike, a wooden gate and descending steps into the green. I enter another dimension—one of several tucked into Cherry Hinton Chalk Pits.
Ascension Parish Burial Ground
A graveyard in England is rife with life. Even in October the graveyard is green. Soil rarely shows, shrouded by a tangle of grass in all stages of growth and senescence, leaves of so many different shapes they lose definition to human eyes, tough stems and new stems, shocks of roots, crowds of brambles, clumps of moss, and even now, flowers, little white clusters of yarrow. In the spring there are snowdrops and daffodils. Under the plants are crawling things, and in the trees are flying things. Footpaths are worn over grass or blanketed in rust-colored yew needles (death-dealing if you eat them); headstones are skew like Jack-o’-lantern teeth with a green patina of age and the steady crawl of ivy. If the Friends of the Ascension Parish Burial Ground didn’t have their monthly work parties to keep the life at bay, within months, perhaps, you wouldn’t know there were any dead kept and remembered here on All Souls’ Lane.
Newnham College: A Tour
Newnham College and its surrounding lush, peaceful neighborhood was one of the reasons I wanted to end my 6-month pandemic hiatus and return to Cambridge for the fall. In a time when mobility is limited, this is a good place to be.
G. David, Bookseller
Part I: A quest for nature books
In St. Edward’s Passage, one of the many stone-and-cobble folds of the Cambridge city centre off of the teeming King’s Parade, there is a secondhand bookshop that is exactly what you would expect a Cambridge bookshop to be. Looking over the little jungle-y churchyard of St. Edward King and Martyr Church, an unassuming but functional blue awning announces in bold letters G. DAVID, EST 1896, and a few outdoor shelves, crates, and display windows announce a clutter of books. Entering puts you in a bookshelf sandwich. You are pressed breathtakingly close to dozens of dashing and eclectic strangers; breathing books, inhaling titles. (The same could be said about your proximity to the other patrons dancing past you in the between-bookshelf space.) The first glimpses on my first visit were enough to put me in a literary swoon—poetry by Ted Hughes, contemporary fiction, something called Treasured Island: A Book Lover’s Tour of Britain, Ursula K LeGuin, Dickens, Darwin. There were quirky posters and postcards pinned to the wall, black and white photos of historical David’s Bookshop milestones, photos of notable people with G. David bags (including Michelangelo’s David), and an envelope addressed only to “David’s Bookshop, The Passage, Cambridge” with a sticky note proudly announcing that it found its way here. And there were more rooms, and a downstairs. (No photography allowed, or I would have eaten it all up in my camera.)
Needless to say, I left with more books than I had come to buy.
