BlueWhiteTV produced this calm and enchanting short film, “A Snowy Day in Happy Valley,” shot last winter. It captures some of the most beautiful spaces in town and on campus:

It would be beautiful to watch a similar video with scenes from Mount Nittany, Millbrook Marsh Nature Center, the Indian Steps, and other wilder spots in and around our valley.

When people talk about there being “something in the water up there in Happy Valley,” little vignettes like this do so much to answer why that feeling exists. That sense of a specialness of place or of a genius loci exists because there’s real community there, and real little towns with main streets, and a beautiful and coherent and aesthetically complementary campus, and a charming and architecturally layered State College borough, and wonderful little hamlets surrounding them on all sides.