“Travel like Ghandi, with simple clothes, open eyes and an uncluttered mind.” – Rick Steves Packing for a trip, or for a hike, informs. It teaches us what we can do without. And it turns out we can do without a lot of things. Add a few layers, a few event-specific bits of fashion if…
“The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world.” ― Zhuang Zhou We anticipate what we believe we’ll find in the world, when we get out there to meet it. There’s a level of understanding that comes with…
“Deep in the forest there is something sacred that exists without a perceptible function. This is the central core, the navel of the world, and I want to return to that place.” — Hayao Miyazaki Last month I walked through a forest with several coworkers on a group hike. One of them commented that the…
Harriman State Park in New York is the second largest state park in the state, and honestly it feels pretty big when you’re in it. Still, it doesn’t feel like there should be this kind of elbow room so close to the gridlock of Metro NY. And yet here it is. This story began two…
Let’s get the elephant in the room addressed right off the bat: Anthony’s Nose has an odd name. Here’s one story I came across in Kiddle that describes how it got it: “Pierre Van Cortlandt, who owned this mountain, said it was named for a pre-Revolutionary War sea captain, Anthony Hogan. This captain was reputed…
At what point on the line of consistent routine does a habit accelerate from a regular part of your life to a major part of your identity? Put another way, if we are what we repeatedly do, at what moment does what we do become us? It may be that moment when you can’t imagine…
Build a new house down by the seaGet to the place we were meant to beYou’ll know it when you smile— World Party, When the Rainbow Comes Do you ever wonder why people are drawn to the seashore? Is it the taste of salt, or the sound of waves crashing on the beach? These are…
“The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there.”― Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods The White Mountains of New Hampshire…
“On every side, the eye ranged over successive circles of towns, rising one above another, like the terraces of a vineyard, till they were lost in the horizon. Wachusett is, in fact, the observatory of the State. There lay Massachusetts, spread out before us in its length and breadth, like a map. There was the…
“Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, ‘That is an oak tree’, or ‘that is a banyan tree’, the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the…
