Before the winter’s cold, there was music in the landscape. In the golden light of a fall afternoon, professors Alden Griffith and Kim McLeod on guitar and mandolin serenaded listeners with folk favorites like “Stewball Was a Racehorse,” warmed by a campfire at Paramecium Pond. Just down College Road, strains of Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train”—played by Grey Devlin ’22 on the sax—floated down from the Green Hall Courtyard and mingled with trumpet melodies rising from the goldenrod in the Science Center meadow.

The two-hour event was sponsored by the Paulson Ecology of Place Initiative, which seeks to enhance students’ sense of place and connect them with the natural world on campus—with the hope of enriching “their academic experience, personal well-being, and communities at Wellesley and in the world.” The musical afternoon was aimed at all comers, from those who only could take in some melodies walking by to those who could linger by the fire for camaraderie.