On Thursday, I shadowed a group of students and faculty from Albion College (Michigan), as Fred Swanson and Mark Schulze gave them a grand tour of Andrews’ LTER sites, cuttings, watersheds and hiked the Old Growth Trail. Attentive, engaged, great listeners, enthusiastic — a really wonderful group. Albion College has an Institute for the Study of the Environment, through which students enroll in a course called “Ecology and Environmental Issues of _____.”  Each offering features a different location. The course provides a preparatory seminar, and then sends the students out to ecosystems in different regions of the country. This spring’s seminar focuses on the Pacific Northwest; the group rode the “Empire Builder” train to Portland, where they rented vans to drive down to Andrews; now they are heading out to sites along the ocean’s coastline. What a great course of study! Environmental studies, sustainability, and feet-in-the-moss field research. I have a soft spot for Albion, since it was my father-in-law’s alma mater and he always spoke so highly of Albion. Happy travels, friends!