Hill Slug Chronicles: The Castle on the Hill

A curious engraving on the footbridge entrance to Whitman College. At first I was perplexed, then amused. Now it reminds me what to think every time I doubt myself. How nauseatingly fluff-headed of me, but it seems to be working.

15 January 2011

I like taking pictures after a big snowfall. We get about half a day before the machines come through and turn everything black.

Our first big storm, on December 26, gave us about a foot. It was a Sunday, and I spent the day inside, on my stomach, a pillow under my rib cage and two under my legs, stretching my spine and reading scientific papers.

The next day I was supposed to be in the lab. I dug out the driveway in the morning (to a certain PT FreeWheeler: I know, I know, I shouldn't have done that), but our street wasn't cleared until 1:30 in the afternoon.

So I spent the day at home, working on a data presentation, my first in the new lab, and one that was making me very, very nervous. Those who know what my life was like in the Brain Factory will understand.

By the 28th the snow was sliding off our garage roof. Icicles, dripping in the wind, leaned inwards.

December 28 was in the middle of Princeton University students' winter break. Although the main roads on campus had been cleared, the path that I take to get from the parking garage to the lab, which goes through mostly dormitory territory, had not been cleared. I was told on two occasions that day, "Everything would be cleared if the students were here."

My favorite part of the walk to work is when I pass through Whitman College. From the western side it doesn't look like much, but once I cross the little footbridge into the open quad, it's a different story. I like taking pictures there.

This is a patio at the edge of the quad. It faces east, which makes getting pictures in the morning difficult.

On the other side of the building, student bikes had been buried under the drifting snow.

For almost three months I've been walking the same path into work every morning. I guess I'd been looking down a lot, partly because my back injury made walking painful, and partly because I was, even if I didn't know it, still feeling insecure.

That all changed. First, the morning walk stopped hurting as my physical therapy began to kick in. Second, I gave my presentation, didn't get shredded, and finally realized that I fit in.

That's when I started noticing the turrets on campus. They're everywhere.

These are just the ones I see on my walk to the lab. This is the northwest corner of Whitman College:

I haven't been around long enough to know what I'm looking at. Checking a campus map would be cheating.

This is Guyot, which is attached to the building I work in (the low, ugly thing on the lower right side):

On a rare walk from the lab to Nassau Street, I found even more turrets.

Before I even started working at Princeton I was calling the place "the Castle on the Hill." I was using hyperbole; I had no idea the campus would turn out to be so castle-y.

Last week we got another eight inches of snow. I made it into the lab this time, but not before stopping for some more pictures:

Princeton's mascot is a tiger. I don't know how these lions got here.

The walk to the lab is pretty.

The view from the lab is not.

Our building, sandwiched between an imposing antique and an airy 1980s-era structure, is vintage mid-1960s cinder block and exposed plumbing. At least the cinder blocks are painted white, but the doors and trim are an unflattering green-gray. The lights in the lab hang on ballasts just below rattling heating ducts and gray pipes. Out in the hallway hundreds of wires and cables hug the wall by the ceiling. The whole place hums.

My desk, after almost three months, finally looks as if someone works there:

For those of you mouse-workers from the Brain Factory, click on the picture and look on the shelf just above and to the right of the computer, where the gold chain is. Look familiar? The post-it on the far left reads, "wash brains." Some things never change.

OK, I cheated a little and poked around Princeton's web site for some architectural photos. Here's Guyot from the front. With turrets.

This is the building I work in, taken from Washington Road. It looks so much better from the outside.

This is the building on the other side of us, with a bit of ours showing on the left.

This is the Lewis Library, a Frank Gehry production, and, as far as I've seen, the craziest-looking building on campus. It's across Washington Road from us. It has no turrets.