Gentle Joy

Campus Pond, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Photo by Ellen Finkelstein

This featured photo for March in the 2026 Head in the Clouds Amherst wall calendar comes from Ellen Finkelstein, who captured this scene at the Campus Pond at UMass Amherst, also affectionately called the “duck pond.”

This photo captures such a gentle joy – a bench overlooking the pond, geese and ducks drifting across the water, an adult and child pausing together. In twelve years of calendars, we’ve only rarely featured people, which makes this moment all the more special – a reminder of how we connect not just with the landscape, but with each other.

For our final 2026 calendar, the jury selected favorite images from more than a decade of past calendars rather than issuing an open call. This photograph originally appeared in the 2018 calendar – and it feels just right for this moment in March, as our relentlessly cold and snowy winter may finally be loosening its grip. 🌤️🦆