In his latest column, John Cross ’76 explains why “we always have the whispering pines.”
Bowdoin’s pines have been associated with the College since its beginnings—not as early as the Bowdoin sun seal (a version of which was adopted in 1799), but pre-dating the use of the Bowdoin family coat of arms (1811), and more than a century before the selection of the polar bear as the College’s official mascot in 1913. At the time of Bowdoin’s founding white pines covered much of the sandy plain that extended eastward from the college grounds.
O ye familiar scenes, — ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine…”
“Morituri Salutamus,” 1875
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
