sweet auburn | 2023 volume i
The Wildlife of Mount Auburn
Text and Photos by Gonzalo Giribet Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology , Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology ; Harvard University
T here are very few spots in Cambridge or elsewhere that convey the serenity of Mount Auburn Cemetery — a place , I must confess , I did not get to know well until the COVID-19 pandemic . Many people come to the Cemetery to visit their departed loved ones , to discover its famous monuments , to admire its majestic trees , or simply to take a comforting stroll . Although I had visited a couple of times before , I was definitely not a regular .
Ever since I can remember — and I am talking about a really young age — I have been happiest in the outdoors , surrounded by the melodies , the scents , and the peace of nature , interacting with all sorts of creatures . Today I consider myself the luckiest person , as my job has taken me to explore nature all around the world , from the Arctic to the Antarctic , every continent , every ocean .
Then came a pandemic , the outside world emptied , and I became glued to a Zoom screen — as many others did — for countless hours , endless weeks , months . But then I realized that one could get to places in a fraction of the time needed before the pandemic . I started going outdoors every day , before or after the dreaded Zoom meetings , sometimes at lunchtime . It was then that I truly discovered Mount Auburn Cemetery . I could get there in less than 10 minutes , as opposed to the 30 minutes it usually takes me now at rush hour . Mount Auburn became my safe haven while in Cambridge , my default place to go . It was also around that time that I became sort of obsessed with bird photography and made my first sightings of many bird species at the Cemetery .
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