On an otherwise unremarkable spring day in 1915, William T. Foster, Reed’s first President, strolls toward Sallyport, lost in thought. Life is a course charted between knowledge and ignorance, light and dark, truth and fiction – indeed, between Lux and Nox, the two grotesques guarding the portal as he enters. Where to guide his nascent College, newly troubled by adversity? And it is this question, posed precisely between these two poles, exactly as he enters the portal, that bends the fabric of time toward an answer and propels him out the other side… into 2025!
Reunion-goers have the chance to pick up the quest–your task is to help him return to his time by deciphering 11 clues to 11 locations around Reed Campus, enjoying a rather pleasant tour while collecting one letter at each locale. Then, gathering together those letters, you have only to unscramble them into a four-word phrase and you have saved the day. But more: the first 250 to show their work at Prexy earn a special keepsake reward – and yes, boundless glory!The Scoutbook you’ll pick at Prexy contains valuable information to spark your quest, or pick up the trail at any of the 11 locations if you happen upon one over the weekend.
With theses completed and celebrations held at Renn Fayre, the seniors (myself included) prepare for their final day as Reed students and the event that will transform them into Reed alumni: Commencement.
Personally, I feel torn between a myriad of emotions. I’m relieved to be getting my degree and excited to move on to new exciting things, but I’m also nostalgic for the time I’ve spent at Reed and sad to be leaving the community I’ve become so ingrained in over the last four years.
I’ve been reminiscing on my underclassman years, and looking through photos from my entire time at Reed. How much I’ve changed and grown, and how Reed has shaped who I’ve become. I wonder how life will be outside of the Reed bubble and how my connections to this community will change as my class disperses into the world.
Working in the alumni office has definitely framed my outlook on the post Reed community positively though. The resources and connections available to us do not just vanish upon graduation (clearly, as I’m writing this blog for alumni). Knowing that the Reed community will still be there for me brings me comfort in spite of the uncertainty that the world outside Reed promises.
Deep in the Reed College canyon lies the orchard, home to various fruit trees. But the orchard is not the only place on campus to forage fruit. Below is a tale from Tracy Poe ’91 about the old fig tree by the Reed College Apartments (RCA) and her endeavors to care for it.
There’s this fig tree, see, down at the RCAs. When I was a kid living at 36th and Knapp in the 70s/80s, before RCAs or even many of the Canyon-adjacent parcels even belonged to Reed, I used to forage from that tree in the summers. Summer-time in Portland was a child-forager’s dream, from the crawdads in Johnson Creek to the old orchards that used to surround the Canyon, yielding plums, cherries, apples, quince, and of course blackberries.
Reed has a lot of legacy trees from the days when the surrounding area was all homesteads and truck farms. 40 years ago they were still harvestable, but it was the beginning of the end of anyone looking after them on any kind of regular basis. Development and neglect encroached on a lot of our old foraging territory over the years. Reed campus still has some thriving black walnut trees, and the remnant of the old orchard just below 39th at the south end of the Canyon. When I was a student, the Grove Dorms were a giant community garden.
The Reed fig in October, 2024
Fruit trees are domestic plants, and they need care in order to keep giving food, but sadly a lot of those caregivers are gone and the trees just get old and die if no one attends to them.
Anyway: the ReedFig was still bearing beautiful fruit well into the early 90s. As a Dorm Mom at the RCAs, just a few years after it was acquired by Reed for student housing, I was still harvesting grocery bags full of fruit every September/October.
I graduated in ’91, left for grad school on the East Coast, where I live now, and didn’t think about that tree until many years later, when I attended a Reunion and decided to go give the tree a visit. That must have been 2015 or so …
When I did, I discovered that the tree had at some point been hacked way back. Not pruned, but chain sawed down, so that it was being choked by undergrowth and blackberry runners. I was very sad to see this, and was sure the tree would die.
The undergrowth of the Reed fig, choked out by other plants
But I kept visiting, and what do you know, that tree just kept sending out new growth, and searching for the sun. It was too weedy and starved to give much fruit, except in the very upper story where it was only good to feed the birds. Invisible, probably, to anyone who happened by. Every year, I thought, if that tree doesn’t die, I should find someone who cares enough to prune it properly and give it a new life.
In the meantime, I did a little research. The tree has a sister, across 28th Ave behind the farm stand and food trucks. Both of them were planted by the Japanese immigrant family who owned the farm that used to cover the whole curve of the road from Bybee to the Rhododendron Garden, sometime between 1900-1920, from what I’ve been able to gather.
That tree is huge—almost 40 years older than it was when I was harvesting it in my Reed days. And it still produces beautiful fruit in the late summer/early fall. Both sisters are 100, maybe 125 years old now. Standing so near to one another, and yet so different in their fates.
The sister fig tree behind the fruit stand
So I put the word out on a Facebook page: Reed Culinaria. And to my surprise, a lot of people remembered the RCA tree and wanted to bring it back to life.
So we got some folks together —alum Hilary Trzynka ’91 agreed to teach a Paideia class about pruning and taking cuttings from the tree. We did that in January. Ten people showed up, but we made cuttings for a bunch of alums around the country who plan to pick them up at Reunions this year. Amanda Waldroupe ’07 helped us get funding to pay for the supplies from the Portland Alumni Chapter.
Fig cuttings under a grow light
For now, we are posting on Reed Culinaria and hoping we’ll be able to continue to care for the tree. Our long term goal is to get a group in to clear the understory and prune it back to a place where it can begin to flourish and produce fruit again. We’d love for current students to take an interest and help us re-establish the tree’s health. We’ve been keeping it lowkey, but we’d be really happy to have other caretakers.
It’s been a cool journey to get other people involved, and I’ve been moved by the level of enthusiasm my fellow alumni have shown. I think just for its connection to the historic farms around it and its sister tree, it deserves to be noticed and commemorated by the community in some way.
I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t think that is a good idea.
I don’t have Facebook but that story just might make me create an account to join Reed Culinaria…
As the winter transitions to spring, the snow (or rather, ice) on Reed campus is replaced with cherry blossom petals. The trees all blossom in an array of pinks and whites, and the students flock to the great lawn to enjoy the sunlight they so seldom see.
The trees in Eliot Circle were planted in 1973, and they are at the fullest time of their long lives.
In case you can’t make it to campus to view for yourself, here are some of my favorite photos from spring at Reed! Photo credit to Oscar Pulliam ’25.
If there’s one thing that unites Reedies, it’s our love for learning, and that’s what Paideia is all about. This year, Paideia will take place from Saturday, January 18, to Sunday, January 26, and will include an array of classes taught by students, professors, and alumni. With some returning courses such as “Building Reed College in Minecraft”, “Reed College Survivor,” and “The Art of Pokemon Battling” along with some new ones like “World Domination 110: the Reed Alumni Agenda”, there’s classes for everyone!
As we move towards post-pandemic life, Paideia is once again open for all Reed community members, which includes alumni, so we hope to see you there!
