NYC Vignettes: Central Park in Autumnal Tints
December 9, 2013
Central Park in autumn left me with feelings of nostalgia and romance. I found that the special effects manipulations on my Photo Express iPad app helped to evoke these soft and elegiac feelings better than the unedited photos. For example, consider these three versions of the above photo:
Which one do you like best? It’s hard to choose, isn’t it?
I did get carried away with the dramatic, artsy manipulations of my photos from Central Park. I hope you like the kaleidoscope of colors and images as much as I do.
That Golden Time of Year
October 25, 2013
“Yellow the bracken,
Golden the sheaves . . .”
— Florence Hoatsen
Last week I celebrated the color red in the landscape. Today’s post gives equal time to the yellows, golds, and greens.
Home Again with a More Informed Imagination
February 7, 2013
“No place can be real emotionally unless we’ve imagined the life there, and our imagining is not likely to be very substantive if not informed.”
— William Kittredge, Southwest Homelands
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
— Mark Twain
“Travel is not altogether an indulgence. Going out, seeking psychic and physical adventures, can reawaken love of the shifting presence of the sacred Zen ‘ten thousand things’ we find in the wiggling world. Travel, then, is a technique for staying in touch, a wake-up call, not a diversion, but a responsibility.”
— William Kittredge, Southwest Homelands
I’m back home again after my first trip to New York City. Now, when I read a novel set in NYC, or see a movie that takes place there, or hear news of the big city, I will have a better sense of the geography of the place and my responses will be more grounded. I know now how walkable the city is, and that despite its size and population, NYC is manageable because it feels like a collection of small villages.
I do feel that tourist travel is an indulgence, but for me, it is a necessary one. Any travel is mind-broadening. And it’s good for the spirit to feast on new sights and experiences. The challenge is to hold on to that sense of wonder and adventure as I transition back to the familiar geography of my home and workplace.
I can see that traveling on vacation is, on some levels, an escape from my “real” life. I do partly agree with this comment: “Looking, consuming with the eye and producing nothing, can never be a genuine life.” (Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Not Now Voyager) Schwartz goes on to reflect on the risk of traveling as an escape from the struggles of making a meaningful life at home: “Nonetheless, when we’re gripped by uncertainty, travel feels like a ready solution to the problem of What next? What to do, what to think, what to be? . . . On a trip, there’s always another monument, another excursion, another natural wonder to visit, to prove to ourselves that we’re doing something.”
My time in New York City felt like that — always another sight to see. I couldn’t have sustained that level of sightseeing for too many more days. After four days in the city, I felt full, and glad to return home to digest and make sense of all that filled my mind. New York offers such richness, and I can see that it is easy to overdose.
And now it is time to learn once again how to be at home:
” . . . the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive a the ground at our feet and learn to be at home.”
— Wendell Berry
Central Park in Winter
February 2, 2013
“I have never found a city without its walkers’ rewards.”
— John Finley, “Traveling Afoot”
Temperatures plummeted to about 10 degrees during our final two days in NYC, but we found that it was comfortable walking as long as we stayed bundled up. Walking through the trees of Central Park broke the wind, taking the biggest edge off the cold. The park was a starkly beautiful place in winter. We happened to be there when they city was making snow for a winter festival. The sparkly moisture in the air created an eerily beautiful backdrop to the views.
The Beauty of the High Line in January
January 27, 2013
One of the top highlights of my first trip to New York City was walking the High Line, an elevated park built on an old railway. It’s currently about 1.45 miles in length. We walked the entire line, from the southern entrance in the Meatpacking District to its current terminus on 34th Street. I wish I could return in each of the four seasons because as lovely as the park is in the cold of January, it must be even more vibrant in spring, summer, and fall.
Let me take you on a virtual tour.

700 panes of colored glass — art installation called The River that Flows Both Ways by Spencer Finch
And here are some of the plants, trees, and flowers along the High Line in winter:
Tree-Watching and Listening Project: The Music of Trees
October 25, 2012
I made a special visit to the Washington Park Arboretum yesterday to experience Paths II: The Music of Trees, a series of seven sound installations by composer Abby Aresty. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington, and this outdoor music project is her dissertation. She recorded natural sounds at these sites in different seasons, and then used them in compositions, which are broadcast in three-hour “concerts” on Wednesdays and Saturdays in October. You can read more about this remarkable project in this Seattle Times article.
I didn’t want the month to pass without checking out this unusual art project. Armed with a map from the Visitor’s Center, I strolled the paths looking for the seven listening sites. As always, I enjoyed wandering among the many tall trees of the arboretum. And the unique soundscapes made this visit especially memorable.

“Twisted things continue to make creaking contortions.” (Gaston Bachelard). At Site 1, twisted plastic tubing becomes “mutant” branches.

Site 6 used hanging sculptures like wind chimes, and the music incorporated the sounds of falling leaves.
Scarlet and Yellow, Golden and Brown
October 24, 2012
Scarlet and yellow,
Golden and brown,
Winds of October
Blow all the leaves down.
Tear from the branches
Their curtains and spread
Carpets of color
Beneath them instead.
Glittering with rain
Or ablaze in the sun,
Falling in showers
Or dropped one by one.
Scarlet and yellow,
Golden and brown,
Winds of October
Blow the leaves down.
As far as I know, this is one of the few times that I am repeating a poem that I have previously posted on this blog! I still can’t find the author of this poem, which I first read in a Waldorf school parenting class. It certainly fits the landscape around Green Lake this week.
Yesterday was the 2012 Georgetown Garden Walk. My friend Carol and I strolled around, map in hand, enjoying the garden ramble. We re-visited old favorites from last year’s Walk, and eyed a few new surprises. This year the Garden Walk was made extra special by art in the gardens, a co-event called “Cross Pollinate.”
My absolute favorite part of the Georgetown Garden Walk was Jon B. Dove’s garden cottage. I would love to have a garden retreat like this to write, paint, and work on my blog. Here are some photos:
It Was the Morning of the Sixth of May
May 6, 2012
“It was the morning of the sixth of May,
And May had painted with her soft showers
A garden full of leaves and flowers.
And man’s hand had arranged it with such sweet craft
There never was a garden of such price
But if it were the very Paradise.”
— Geoffrey Chaucer, from The Canterbury Tales
A man’s hand crafted the lovely grounds of the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle, and it has become one of our city’s paradises. The city of Seattle hired the Olmstead Brothers (successors to Frederick Olmstead, who designed New York City’s Central Park among other famous commissions) to develop the landscaping plans for the Arboretum. The Olmsteads were proponents of connecting urban dwellers to wild and natural spaces.
Here are some photos of my Spring visit to the park:
The azaleas at the Washington Park Arboretum are just now starting to bloom and will likely be in full splendor by Mother’s Day. Azalea Way is the main walking thoroughfare in the park, a grassy expanse dotted with park benches and lined with trees and flowers. It’s a relaxing place for a stroll or a picnic.