campus character The Campus climbs in with Heather Pynne '11

Author: Tess Russell

Looking to relieve some of that exam week stress? Heather Pynne '11 has the perfect prescription.

Earlier this year, Pynne and her friend Sarah Simonds '11 stumbled upon an "amazing climbing tree" near their rooms in Ross. Before the temperature dropped a few weeks ago, the two girls paid regular visits to the inviting tree - a mystery specimen, even to Simonds' forester father - which they nicknamed Fia, meaning "dark of peace." Pynne even liked to bring her Zen MP3 player and sing along to her favorite songs. Others trying to achieve a, well, zen-like state under the canopies of Battell Beach include members of the Meditation Club, whom Pynne encountered on one of her climbs.

"The beauty is that when you sit up in the tree, you feel like no one can see you," Pynne said. "It's calming, because you kind of get to be in seclusion and very connected to nature even though you're actually right on campus."

Fia is not Pynne's only arboreal connection. Her fellow cast members in October's first-year show, "Severed Headshots: Sinister Scenes and Monologues," mastered the pronunciation of Pynne's surname through the use of a clever (if somewhat cumbersome) device - "Heather like the bush, Pynne like the tree."

The Greenville, S.C.-native, who plans to pursue a joint major in English and Theater, is what you might call a "triple threat" in thespian terms. In addition to her vocal and stage pursuits mentioned above, she is an avid dancer who works at the College's Dance Theater and plans to organize a self-instructed ballet technique class this spring. She also intends to brush up on her "toe-tapping" - a challenging form of tap, performed in point shoes and popularized by 1930s-era films - in the near future.

For now, though, Pynne is relishing her newfound independence as a college student. One illustration of this is her e-mail signature, an excerpt from the musical "Spring Awakenings," which explores the possibility of being geographically disconnected from one's past but still very much emotionally involved with it: "It's like I'm your lover or more like your ghost/I spend the day wondering what you do, where you go."

Middlebury's ability to offer a change of pace, and a change of weather, was largely what attracted Pynne to the school. She admits that the easy access to ski slopes was a huge factor in her decision, along with the Bread Loaf School. I had assumed that she was referring to that campus' picturesque mountain setting, but she informed me otherwise.

"It was the name 'Bread Loaf' that seemed absolutely perfect for me, a carboholic with a fiction addiction," she joked.

Winter Term will mark Pynne's first time assuming the role of stage manager in a dramatic production - the upcoming "Sweeney Todd" - but as a Southerner on a New England campus, this fall has been marked by several other important "firsts," including her first moose sighting and her first trip to Maine (for the Thanksgiving holiday).

"I became positively giddy at the first snow, and everyone said to me, 'You're from the South, aren't you?'" Pynne said.

Still, she's careful to respect the boundaries of those Middlebury students hailing from higher latitudes.

"People here don't seem to be big country music fans," Pynne noted. "So when I'm singing, I usually stick to show tunes."