New York City has 5.2 million trees, and each one of them has a life story. For a very long time, a lovely European larch has marked the seasons for those walking in Central Park. It is a deciduous conifer whose needle-like leaves turn yellow in the autumn and fall off. A tulip tree in […]
Entries Tagged as 'nature'
A Tree Grows in Chain Link
April 15th, 2011 · 9 Comments · Explore New York
Tags: manhattan·meditations·nature·new york
Messages From a Snowy Landscape
February 14th, 2011 · 8 Comments · Beyond Gotham
How often have you heard the phrase “sick of winter” lately? It’s a phrase on many lips. As the frigid, single-digit temperatures and biting wind of recent days finally are giving way to the feeling-utterly-balmy 40s and the beginnings of melt – the inexorable winding into spring – take a long look and walk through […]
Present-Moment Thankfulness
November 26th, 2010 · 10 Comments · Beyond Gotham
In the book The Tao of Daily Life is a parable about the present moment. As he is chased by a tiger, a man comes to a cliff and escapes by climbing a vine down it. Upon climbing downward, he sees a tiger at the bottom of the cliff. As if things aren’t difficult enough, […]
Tags: meditations·nature·seasons
A Tranquil Patch of the Meadowlands
November 10th, 2010 · 10 Comments · Beyond Gotham
It’s the kind of place you’d never guess is peaceful. It’s where the great Atlantic Flyway of migrating birds meets the New Jersey Turnpike of commuters, truckers, and travelers. On one side is the turnpike, its several lanes on each side heading north and south, an endless whizzing-by parade of cars, trucks carrying goods bound […]
Tags: meditations·nature·trails
Encountering the “Three-Legged Buddha”
August 19th, 2010 · 11 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Like the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that it evokes, Zhang Huan’s “Three-Legged Buddha” is an artwork of mystery and complexity. It captures life, death, and rebirth. The enormous sculpture is strong and muscular, yet fragile; seemingly dominated yet defiant. Is the key figure within it collapsing, or is it arising? These are the qualities and questions […]
Meditation: An Egret and the Gulf Oil Spill
June 9th, 2010 · 8 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
To whom does the Earth belong? If you have any doubt about it, spend time at a wildlife refuge. Even 15 minutes, let alone a couple of hours, at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey tell the answer: The Earth belongs to all creatures, not just man. Hundreds of sandpipers gather […]
Discovering Architecture All Around Us
May 1st, 2010 · 2 Comments · Beyond Gotham
To an Idaho student, a waterfalls in her region looks like a skyscraper that’s thin at the top and has cascades rippling downward toward the bottom, much like the tower at 1 Wall Street in New York City. To someone else, the sight of an egg shell evokes a dome, a delicate and yet strong […]
Tags: architecture·nature
A Date With the Blossoms In New Paltz
April 21st, 2010 · 6 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Imagine that you were walking in a city park, on a campus, or along a street, and suddenly you see that someone has set up a dozen original paintings of Claude Monet. The masterpieces are before your eyes. Along your path, you see “Impression, Sunrise,” “Winter At Giverny,” and “The Water-Lily Pond,” among many others. […]
NYC’s Great Sunset Spots: Gantry Plaza
January 23rd, 2010 · 8 Comments · Explore New York
Many associate the term “big sky” with America’s West, Montana especially, where you can stand in the middle of a vast, unspoiled land, breathe deeply, and take in the wide-open sky. Who would think of New York City in this context? Believe it or not, New Yorkers have their own places to search out “big […]
New Year’s Meditation On Snow
January 5th, 2010 · 4 Comments · Beyond Gotham
The snow is falling slowly, in its own time, on the evergreen. All is quiet. The New Year presents new possibilities and new questions. The possibilities are uncharted, the questions unanswered. Still, the present moment is enough. What if we just reside in it, stop the running thoughts, and simply behold the surroundings? Take a […]
Tags: meditations·nature
The “Fairest” Land: The Lake District
September 28th, 2009 · 10 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Beautiful landscape calls us to dream and to wander, to take paths unknown. In it, we fix our eyes both on the distant horizons and on the tiniest details at our side. It reaches into our souls, rewards and soothes us. It is the Earth’s embrace. Standing in an open field in England’s Lake District […]
Tags: England·historic preservation·international·nature·spiritual places·stone·trails
Summer Day’s Meditation at the Ashokan
August 25th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Beyond Gotham
It’s the very essence of calm, a still surface of blue-silver water reflecting billowy cumulus clouds above. Large shafts of light pour down through the clouds at angles on the shoreline, creating swaths of light-green trees in the middle of darker pines and bejeweled light on the water. On a 90-degree humid day, I can […]
New York’s Great Sunset Spots: Pier 84
July 17th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Explore New York
Several children splash through the dancing waters of an interactive fountain, a guitarist plays at P.D. O’Hurley’s bar, a woman points out a gargoyle in the flower garden to her toddler daughter, and dogs and humans socialize at the dog run. A man lies on a landing, with his khaki-dressed legs draping over the steps, […]
A Summer Walk at the Irish Memorial
July 10th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Explore New York
“Could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you? That it could sense your presence and feel the care you extend towards it?” John O’Donohue Beauty: The Invisible Embrace If we are blessed with such kinship, then the Irish Hunger Memorial is a place of its embrace. This small. lush […]
Tags: landscape architecture·manhattan·meditations·nature·new york·spiritual places·stone
Kingston Point’s Varied Lives
June 10th, 2009 · 11 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Sometimes, surprising beauty lies behind a nondescript gate. At the end of a long street in Kingston, N.Y., and behind a wrought iron gate, lies a sparkling little park. It’s situated on the Hudson River near where the Rondout Creek flows into the wide river, so that water seems to surround the park. It has […]
Earth Day in New York: 1970 and 2009
April 22nd, 2009 · 6 Comments · Explore New York
John Lindsay was mayor of New York. It was the spring of 1970, when the United States was bogged down in a far-off land in the Vietnam War and divided at home, labor strikes roiled the country, and the Beatles officially broke up. On April 22, 1970, 39 years ago, a spirit of passion, anger, […]
Tags: green energy·nature·new york
Springtime at the Irish Hunger Memorial
April 15th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Explore New York
New York City may seem like a curious place to go looking to see gorse, the small shrub that thrives in rural fields and along hillsides, its yellow flowers rippling across the countryside in spring. But there’s at least one sure place I’ve enjoyed the sight of it in New York – the Irish Hunger […]
Tags: landscape architecture·manhattan·nature·new york·spiritual places
Lists: Ten Actions for Sustainable Cities
February 20th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham
Gas prices are at an average of $1.96 per gallon, far below the $4-plus they hit last year. The price of oil amid a global recession that has sharply curtailed demand declines to $35 per barrel on Feb. 20. People are fearful as many lose jobs and others go through foreclosures. In such an environment, […]
A Winter Walk at the Ashokan Reservoir
February 9th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Beyond Gotham
Seasons come to our bodies much like they do to trees and mountains, lakes and bays. Each individually has its own rhythm and signs of changing, adapting, and flowing from one season to the next, until the momentum of so many heralds the new season en masse. Beckoned by the brilliant sunshine, predictions of temperatures […]
Tags: Catskills·Hudson Valley·nature
Winter Colors in Central Park
December 6th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Explore New York
For the eyes that glory in autumn’s rich, awe-inspiring colors or spring’s bright exuberance, winter may feel like the ho-hum season, one big letdown. To many, it’s “dreary” winter, a time to hunker down inside and hang on until the color in the Northern climes “returns” to the trees, bushes, and flowerbeds come spring. Yet […]
Tags: Central Park·nature·new york·seasons
