They see straw-colored reeds popping out through the snow, bent over at sharp angles. There are iron-gray tree stumps, denuded of bark, and taller trunks, jaggedly broken at their tops and branches. Decades ago, beavers dammed nearby streams, flooding this region of the forest and killing the trees. As beavers depleted their food supply, or were trapped by humans, the dams washed out, the water table dropped, and this land reverted to marshland. Woodier shrubs have grown up in the drier perimeter.
Foster veers off toward a stand of trees.
Unhesitatingly, the students follow him. They sink, they stumble, they rise. No one is willing to be left behind. David Foster and the students in the Freshman Seminar pause in the middle of the marsh. Mass. The Forest was established in 1907, and it supports Harvard's master's program in forest science, a summer program in ecology, and numerous courses for schools at Harvard.