Gambier, OH

For a tiny place, Gambier manages to be quite a lot: part village, part extension of the Kenyon campus, part quaint, part cosmopolitan. Students love the way Gambier is always giving rise to chance meetings, friendly conversations, and moments of beauty. You run into your math professor in the post office and come away with a lunch invitation. You gather with friends at a window table of the Deli so that you can spot other friends outside, then wave them in. At the Middle Ground Café, you chat with a local farmer who hosted you for an internship, or a Wiggin Street teacher whose second graders you tutored. You jog through fall colors on the Kokosing Gap Trail, or take a midnight walk on Middle Path in winter, snowflakes glistening among the lights strung in the tree branches.

In Gambier, stores rub shoulders with College offices. Benches and white picket fences keep the atmosphere relaxed. Amish buggies stop in town; so do renowned writers, musicians, scholars, actors, and activists. The village got its start and grew up together with Kenyon. In fact, Middle Path runs right through "downtown" Gambier, and it's impossible to say whether local landmarks, like the Kenyon Bookstore, are "town" or "gown," because they're both.

The sense of shared citizenship here is strong. The crowd cheering your team or clapping at your concert will include village residents and store clerks along with faculty members and classmates. Those connections bloom spontaneously. Wherever you're from and wherever you're headed, you'll probably put down some roots in this Ohio village.