“A tree came down, look at that.” Sue Avery, a botanist and certified landscaper, examines a thin wire cage along the border of the Ashley Schiff Preserve on campus.

When Stony Brook University decided to bulldoze the tallest conifer tree on campus in the 1960s, political science professor Dr. Ashley Schiff chained himself to its trunk.

Trekking through a landscape vastly altered by a glacier, Stony Brook University alumni and other guests absorbed both facts and scenery on a geological campus tour.