Artistic Guide to Harvard: Nature Spots

With Earth Day now past—reminding us all to appreciate nature and more immediately how we’re brutally murdering it—the importance of connecting with our environment is once again at the forefront of our minds. And so as finals loom and you try to swerve and run at your summer plans with open arms, remember to take a few moments here and there to breathe the fresh air. Reminisce about simpler times, when playing outside was a priority and you’d never heard of an essay longer than your book reports.

Arnold Arboretum: Arborway, Boston

Visit Jamaica Plains and get in touch with your inner Steve Irwin as you tour one of the only green areas left in our great city. The second-largest link in the Emerald Necklace, the Arboretum is certainly a hidden gem, housing over 280 acres of land and almost 15,000 individual plants. Tours are given every day during the spring, and this year’s Lilac Sunday is at the very beginning of finals. So if you’re one of the lucky ones with late finals, stop gloating and bring back some lilacs to your stressed-out friends.

Harvard Museum of Natural History: 26 Oxford St

Of course, if you’re too “busy” with “schoolwork” to put in the effort of a day trip, there is always the much more convenient Museum of Natural History, just down Oxford Street, past Annenberg. Vicariously live through a curation of findings from scientists who are actually out in nature, observing and experiencing. It’s even free if you bring your ID. A new exhibit up since April 28, “‘Pop-up’ Exhibit: The Global Exposure Project,” features HBS students finding “their passion for seeing the world.” If they can do it, you should gain a little hope for yourself.

Tercentenary “Theatre”: You Know Where This Is

But if you’re completely hopeless, at least take a few seconds here and there to gasp in some fresh spring air as you sprint from library to class to office hours and back. Momentarily immerse yourself in sweet, languorous memories of Yardfest and get in tune with humanity at its purest: tourists. Watch as they find wonder in items such as a church, a library, and a statue. They’ll get their thrill from that cardboard cutout of JFK in some Weld freshman’s window, and you’ll get yours from watching them feed worryingly overweight squirrels.

—Staff writer Victoria E. Sanchez can be reached at victoria.sanchez@thecrimson.com.