Preface

I walked into the hotel room assigned to me as a member of the review panel. Instantly, I realized that something was awry. The room was in good order—the usual desk, the bed with too many pillows, and the cabinet bearing an enormous TV and a flimsy coffeemaker in matte black to conceal the coffee stains. Well-practiced, I first switched off the TV that was advertising special deals for sister hotels in exotic places and then shut down the AC unit that was blasting dusty Arctic air. The window was hermetically sealed as always, but the view of a damp Washington, DC, street was reassuring. It was different from the view of the parking lot I had from the previous week’s conference hotel in San Francisco. Apart from that, everything was identical in the two hotel rooms. Even the abstract picture hanging on the wall opposite the window was the same confusion of blobby gray, green, and yellow vertical lines.

I felt weighed down; this was not where I wanted to be. Slowly, I unpacked my travel bag and tended a few urgent messages in my email inbox. I walked back to the window. I noticed a patch of green bushes on the other side of the road, beyond the intersection. Was it the edge of a city park? I reached for my coat. It would be chilly in the late-afternoon drizzle.

By the time I returned through the automatic glass doors of the hotel, I was back to my normal self. I felt positive and motivated by the work tasks ahead. I noticed that the hotel was clean and quiet and that the staff were doing their best. Once again, making contact with the natural world—in this case, a nondescript city park that majored in worn grass, paved paths, trash cans, and a children’s playground—had made all the difference.

I find myself reflecting on this incident many times, perhaps because the identikit hotel rooms on opposite sides of the continent were a bit creepy, or perhaps because I would never have expected the small park to have the power to lighten my mood so dramatically.

My meandering thoughts that start with this Washington, DC, experience always end up in the same place: What do I truly value about the natural world? To my consternation, my attempts at a succinct answer to this question are invariably unsatisfying. The real answer, at least for now, is the set of essays in this book, which were written between summer 2021 and early 2023. It is a highly personal answer that is particular to the beautiful world of upstate New York, centered on the city of Ithaca, where I live. In this world, the local city park borders the southern end of Cayuga Lake, and it has osprey nests, bluebirds, unmown meadows of summer flowers, and butterflies. Yes, I am very fortunate.

The other and perhaps greater purpose of these essays is to entertain and remind ourselves that, despite the many insults inflicted by humans, the natural world is the most interesting and fun place to be.