Midwestern tradition comes to Stanford
Rain fell on the walkers periodically, coming down lightly soon after they passed through Escobar Gate on their way to the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve field station.
Jasper Ridge docent Bob Dodge held a salamander briefly to give the walkers a better look at the amphibian.
President John Hennessy, left, walked with undergraduate student Ruth McCann, Daniel Smith, a visiting scholar at the Bill Lane Center, and David Kennedy, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, as the group left Jasper Ridge.
On Saturday, a dedicated group of students, faculty, staff and community members—led by history Professor David Kennedy—walked the entire 23.5-mile rim of the Stanford lands in one day. The trek, titled "Walking the Farm," was sponsored by the Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West and stems from a Midwestern tradition of walking the perimeter of one's property to stay in touch with the land and neighbors.
The route traced the borders of Stanford's academic reserve, the research park, Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and the various neighborhoods, horse-training facilities and ranches included in the fabled stock farm that Leland and Jane Stanford transformed into a university more than a century ago. The route encompassed 8,180 acres.
The walkers, 13 in all, started at 6:30 a.m. and finished by 5 p.m. They encountered sporadic showers until about 10 a.m., when a downpour soaked them for the next half hour. There were a few more light showers, but the weather cleared up after lunch and made for a pleasant home stretch.
The walk capped What Went Down on the Farm: Stanford Campus as a Laboratory for Environmental History, a course taught this quarter by Jon Allan Christensen, a research fellow at the Center for Environmental Science and Policy and a doctoral candidate in the History Department.
"The Lane Center plans to make it an annual event," Christensen said, "and there was enthusiasm among all of the high-profile participants for that."
President John Hennessy joined the walkers at Jasper Ridge, where Bill and Jean Lane hosted a western barbecue that afternoon—and where a group of supporters cheered on the hikers. The walk also kicked off a collaborative curriculum-building website that will serve as a virtual laboratory for teaching and learning about the environment and history of the Stanford lands.
The website, as well as information about Saturday's walk and the route, is at https://walkingthefarm.stanford.edu/. Because the experiment in collaborative curriculum development will have a wiki component, a SUNet ID is required to access the site.
