To me, spring means the following: Palm Sunday, Easter, and fat, frisky robbins; irises, crocus, forsythia and daffodils; mud, intermittent sun, and end-of winter snowstorms. For NPS seasonals, spring is also "hiring season"--that fateful time of year when re-hires are hailed back to parks they've known and loved, and new hires must choose among competing offers, …
Author: Hilary Vidalakis
Cherries, Lindens, and Gingkos: Reciprocity Lessons with Fort Tryon’s Trees
Spring is here, more or less, but New York City never saw a sustained winter. As Leo reminded us last week, climate change is here and now, and I witness its effects every morning as I jog through my beloved, bouldered backyard. Fort Tryon Park feels to me more alive and biodiverse than any corner of the city below. Mice, squirrels, …
Continue reading Cherries, Lindens, and Gingkos: Reciprocity Lessons with Fort Tryon’s Trees
Semi-Permeable Self
I. New Yorkers are more vulnerable than they're willing to admit. On the surface they are hard, cultured, ambitious and imposing, but just under that surface they're soft, and like all of us, they long to connect. This was one of the first things I learned about my new city. When we got here last …
Naturalistic Metaphor
Cities, naturally, take great pride in their cultural institutions: art galleries, museums, and theatres whose cavernous halls contrast the compression and density of life outside their front doors. New York is no exception: there is something sylvan, something "natural" in the transition from bustling 5th Ave. into the more breathable expanse of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The courtyard in the gallery's American …
The Wild, Willful Christmas Tree
Real or artificial, hulking or pint-sized, short or shaggy in the needles, the Christmas tree is among the most beloved of holiday traditions---and its roots are blessedly pagan. The practice of decorating evergreen boughs or trees, on or near the winter solstice, can be traced back to the Romans, Druids, Vikings and Egyptians, for whom the unchanging foliage …
Writing the Wild 