Crum Woods Memories

After reading about Mark Pappas’ film, “The Ruins,” (May 22 edition), Sarah Chenkin wrote to share this memory of the Crum Woods.

I moved to Swarthmore in 1987 before the birth of my first child. I had a dream before moving that I was sailing a boat on a beautiful river.

That boat became the Crum Woods of Swarthmore College. Most days found me somewhere on the banks of Crum Creek. There were three huge tulip poplar trees at the north end, forming an enclosing circle for meditation.

Crum Woods. Photo courtesy of Scott Arboretum.

The creek after a rainstorm, swollen and muddy, proved to be a luxurious swimming pool, especially swimming against the current upstream.

In the deep winter, thick ice became an enchanted pathway, my dogs making tracks in the thin snow covering, chasing sticks gliding across the expanse, as ice-skating from one dam to another upstream became possible.

30 years ago, the ruins were untouched. As the highway was being built, there was stillness. A pool of water that had long ago been a fountain was now enclosed by stone walls of peace. 

Denizens of the woods congregated at that pool, tree leaves bending down to taste its delight, deer visiting, frogs too, tadpoles. I reveled in its lost beauty.

In the spring, just as the May apples and skunk cabbages began to bloom, the entire hillside below those ruins became a breathtaking blanket of purple and white trilliums beneath rhododendrons and hundred-year-old towering trees.

Down below the trilliums, across the creek, was the old Stone Henge, undoubtedly a replica of the real thing, frequently used for student revels.

Despite the disappearance of the Henge, the filling of the ruins pool with dirt (to prevent mosquitos?), graffiti on the stone walls of the pool enclosure, the felling of the meditation trees for an upgraded sewer line, the unbearable noise pollution from I-476 — and now strict leash laws and face mask requirements — magic is still to be found in the Crum Woods. 

On a cool fall day one might find a reishi mushroom growing on a log, or pay a visit in the slowly breaking morning light to see the beavers getting ready for winter, slapping the water, announcing their presence. 

The astonishing beauty of the Crum Woods has taken a hold of my heart, seen me through the raising of a family, and will reside always within.