Last fall, eighteen members of Yale Environmental Humanities—graduate students, postdoctoral associates, faculty, and administrators—spent an afternoon away from the classroom on Yale’s Horse Island in the Long Island Sound. Organized by Faculty Director Paul Sabin and Graduate Coordinator Colton Klein, the field trip marked the program’s second annual visit to the island, which serves as both an ecological field station and a pedagogical resource. Horse Island is the largest and least developed island in the Thimble Islands archipelago and was acquired by the Yale Peabody Museum in 1971.
After arriving by ferry, David Heiser, Director of Student Programs at the Peabody Museum, escorted the group to the island’s research station, designed by the Yale School of Architecture’s Regenerative Building Lab in collaboration with New Haven–based GOA Architecture. Heiser offered a thorough overview of the station, which is constructed from the island’s wood and salvaged or repurposed materials and designed to be easily disassembled in the future. Following introductions, participants split into small groups and ventured off to find comfortable spots on rocky ledges or grassy bluffs to discuss the role of onsite, experiential learning in their own research and teaching. The group later reconvened at the research station to share reflections on the benefits and challenges of supplementing archival work with embodied experiences of the environments they study—from the Arctic to the floodplains and bayous of Louisiana.
Heiser then guided the group on an afternoon-long walking tour, which included an overview of Horse Island’s native plants and an opportunity for birding with binoculars. Low tide arrived at 3:00 p.m., and Heiser brought the group down to the water’s edge to observe organisms in the intertidal zone.
Following the tour, participants had several hours to explore the island’s trails and shoreline independently, engaging in unstructured conversations, sketching, and writing. As the final ferry departure approached at 5:30 p.m., the group packed up their belongings and returned to New Haven with a deeper understanding of how humanities scholars can supplement text- and image-based research with embodied experiences beyond the archives.
