Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Environmental Leader and Innovator | Page 7

maybe spending more time at places like Mount Auburn
will help us take the next step and remember that we’re all
equally dependent on the environment, on clean air, clean
water, sunlight, the welcoming earth, and the things that
grow out of that earth.
Aaron Sachs is Associate Professor of History and American Studies,
Cornell University. He is author of Arcadian America: The
Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition. Dr. Sachs
was the Keynote Speaker at Mount Auburn’s 2013 Council of
Visitors meeting where he examined Mount Auburn from the
Perspective of Environmental History. He lives in Ithaca, NY,
with his wife and three children, though this year he is mostly in
Cambridge, on a fellowship at Harvard University’s Charles Warren
Center, where the focal theme for the academic year is “The Envi-
ronment and the American Past.”
Images of the Cemetery from the early days of photography to the present
day continue to illustrate visitors exploring, enjoying and taking solace in
the landscape. Opposite page, top to bottom; Visitors at the Lawn, c.1870s;
Children Exploring Mount Auburn, 1969 (reprinted with permission
from Harvard Magazine); Birdwatchers, c.1990. This page: Dave Barnett
Leads School Group, 1995; Walking Tour of Willow Pond, 2008.
Summer 2014 | 5