1980

"There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed."

Both Ross Jaffe and Kal Alston still thrill as they drive into Hanover. Said Kal, "Twenty-five years have not dimmed the thrum in my heartbeat when I cross the Connecticut River and ride up the hill to the Green." Ross shared, "I always love the return to Hanover—the excitement I feel as I drive up to the Green from the river or from downtown. The Green and the surrounding buildings still feel the same to me—bringing back a flood of fond memories."

Sometimes, you can go home again. Lynn

Bodden lived in Hitchcock for four years. Living summer term on the other side of campus taught her life from another perspective, but she was glad to return to Hitchcock come fall. "It was home."

Recollections of Dartmouth places are intertwined with interests pursued there. Jim Gifford opines that "the absurdly small doorway" into the WDCR studio in Robinson Hall maybe partly responsible for the fact that he no longer has any hair on the top of his head. Jim fondly remembers the view of campus, town and countryside from atop the broadcast tower for WDCR, although he does not recommend the climb up the tower and recommends even less the climb back down. Bennett Samson recalls the Aegis photo lab.

Bennett also remembers Moosilauke as a student and since. George Lester and Scott Slater each mentioned the bond with Moosilauke forged in college and on return trips with children. When he stayed overnight at the Ravine Lodge in 1998 for the first time since his freshman trip, Scott found it a bit disconcerting to learn that all of the Dartmouth students who work there now were born after he had last stayed at the Lodge in 1976.

At least in his mind s eye, George goes back to Bartlett Tower for rock climbing. Katie Wiley Laud remembers Bartlett as a "romantic, historical place," although she used the stairs. She wonders if anyone who went there after dark has any stories.

At bucolic Dartmouth, fire escapes figure as prominently as in West Side Story. For Katie it is the "fire escape of the third floor of Russell Sage on the Butterfield Side. Looks out over the gorgeous roofs of Tuck Mall, shadowed by spring leaves." Merle Adelman's place is the second-floor porch in mid-Fayerweather where she grilled and drank with roommate Hope Picker during the lazy evenings of summer term and watched the world go by.

For more than one classmate who shared a recollection, a river runs through it. Katie recalled cross-country skiing on the golf course path along the river. A rower for the crew team, Leigh Limbach Johnson remembers "glorious fall days with gorgeous autumn colors, especially yellow, and days with rain and even snow flurries that made your hands numb with cold as you gripped the oars." For early summer evening runs from the Co-op House, Susan Shaw-Meadow would "take off, run around Occom Pond, down to the river and then run right off the dock into the cool waters." For Stuart Bell the river meant waiting to exhale: "I would take off down to the golf course, and leave the course to my left, winding down a hill toward the river. As I descended to water level, I turned left and started to run along a path with the river on my right. It was at this spot that I took a deep breath and all the tensions of the day would be released with my exhale."

Dartmouth is a special place, but she is truly about people. Observes Chris McDade: "It was the people who made the place." To Al Noyes Dartmouth meant "a sense of friendship, comfort and belonging," attributes now more associated with his college friends than with the campus or any particular place there. In the words of Kal Alston, "The connection is through the gathering of people, not to a particular physical space. Dartmouth for me is located in time and space and, for all its physical beauty, cannot completely be separated from the relationships nurtured there—25 years ago through the present."

"All these places had their moments with lovers and friends that I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In my life, I loved them all."

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