It’s a rare sunny day in Oxford today, and I’m taking full advantage to sit outside and journal, though it’s actually quite deceptively cold for the temperature being 45 Fahrenheit. It’s been the kind of day where all I do is park myself in the Radcliffe Camera to read and work on my essays (the likelihood of becoming a hermit during my semester abroad is more real than I’d like to admit…) and the work feels neverending, so I’m grateful for this time to pause, see the sun, and breathe in some fresh air. My sit spot is conveniently located across from the Rad Cam, as students here call it, and I pass by it nearly every day, but I have never once thought to stop and sit here before today. Under the shadow of the imposing University Church, a fourteenth-century Gothic structure with stone gargoyles and a wickedly tall spire, my spot is a little wooden table in the small front garden of the church. It’s quite a charming location, with a small grass lawn and manicured shrubs and trees growing along an enclosed stone wall, and even though it’s not as naturalistic or peaceful as my favorite spots at Wellesley, I think it’s very lovely and quintessentially Oxford. Closing my eyes, I hear faint chorals and rich harmonies from inside the church, a kid proclaiming “I wanna go inside!” and laughter from students talking outside of Brasenose. There are little white buttercups blooming in the grass and a faint, sweet fragrance in the air, reminding me that even though it is still only the end of January, spring will be here soon! There is a tree in front of me shaped like a dome, and it has clusters of small white flowers blooming towards the top of the dome where the sun hits. It has smooth, light brown bark and waxy dark green leaves, and is just barely taller than the spiked iron fence that wraps around the garden.

The University’s storied buildings rise up from behind the trees, and the groups of excited visitors gathered here taking photos of Oxford’s iconic sights make me think about how many people’s stories live within each block of stone. I wonder if the garden at my sit spot was created to be a space for meditation and reflection for students at the University, and if the plants in this garden were always only ornamental—What did this garden look like centuries ago? I see a stone bench covered in lichen tucked in the far corner of the garden under a tree, and it seems like it would be quite a peaceful place to sit, if not for the “keep off the grass sign” that keeps people from actually entering and enjoying the garden. Many of the greenspaces here are behind stone walls, locked behind gates of exclusive colleges, or located far from the other hubs of student life, which raises the question of access. At an institution like the University of Oxford, which has been built on the premise of providing a near-infinite availability of knowledge to a very select few, this question has been on my mind a lot lately. What do these barriers to access say about what kind of person gets to be in nature here in Oxford?