A Kenyon College treasure: 500 acres of nature, open to public

GAMBIER – Kenyon College has a treasure near its campus that many people don’t know about. 

It’s 500 acres of woods, ponds, wetlands and even native Ohio prairie. The property, which has nine miles of trails, is open to the public from dawn to dusk and is also used by the college’s Brown Family Environmental Center to teach students about nature.

“In these crazy times, come on out and go for a hike,” Noelle Jordan, manager of the Brown Center, said in an interview with the Mount Vernon News. 

Visitors can access it from New Gambier Road, State Route 229 and Laymon Road.

Since it was founded 25 years ago, the Brown Center has hosted nearly 100,000 school children on field trips.

“The ponds are a huge attraction,” Jordan said. “We look at frogs and tadpoles and insects.”

They learn about birds and bees too. There are two pollinator plots and a bluebird trail with 35 bluebird boxes.

The land and the nature are used in college classes as well. One class, the Anthropology of Fear, was taught by Dr. Tomás Gallareta Cervera.

“I worked with him to have an opportunity for students to come out at night to do an unguided night walk,” Jordan said.

The students had a map of the property on their cellphones.

“If they experienced any kind of hesitation or anxiety or straight-out fear, they would mark it on that map,” she said.

Another class, called Positive Psychology, is taught by Leah Dickens.

“We worked with her to design a silent mindfulness hike for students that includes time sitting alone — sort of leaning into the quiet and, some might say, boredom; to open up all their natural senses to what’s going on around them,” Jordan said.

With COVID-19, the center discontinued school field trips.

“While our mission calls for us to support Kenyon and the greater community, we had to make a very hard decision to focus our support on Kenyon this year,” Jordan said. “Kenyon has been very concerned about keeping the campus as free from COVID as possible. But we've been working with more faculty than ever to get their students down here.”