High 60. Partly sunny.
Holyoke Community College is situated on a ridge of both sedementary and igneous rocks. On one end of campus, near the main entrance, you can see the layers of shale in which dinosaur fossils can be found. A professor told me once that there is a large fossil on display in the courtyard, but I have yet to see this (even though I look every time I walk through). Perhaps they were joking with me. The other side of campus abuts a natural area with trails throughout. The introductory Biology labs go there to study community ecology, and I go there to relax between classes. This time of year, the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), a member of the lily family, is starting to poke up in the moister locations. The vernal pools are full of blossoming life.
It is time for priority registration here at HCC, and I am swamped with work. My days are filled with students who want to get into classes-“Can I have Mondays and Fridays off and still take the 12 credits I need to be full-time?”-and out of classes-“Do I really have to take Anatomy and Physiology to be a nurse?”. I was able to escape for a little while this morning and sit in the sunshine, resisting all the while the temptation to lay down in the grass.
New England Naturalist 