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I n t r o d u c t i o n C o m i n g H o m e I chose not to go to the woods. I prefer the company of my fellows and like the colorful jumble of rooftops I view from my window. I like the smooth sidewalks and black-topped streets, especially when they glisten with rain. I take pleasure in walking to the store, in selecting fruits and vegetables from the greengrocer, fresh fish from the fishmonger, or a fresh cut of meat from the butcher. I am an urban dweller by choice and inclination, and my life is as natural as breathing. I live in a community tucked away in the southwest corner of an island off the Atlantic Coastal Plain, where salt and fresh waters commingle at the Great River’s drowned mouth, the ocean surging upriver at high tide, and the river draining at ebb. Here in Lower New York Bay, barges, freighters, fishing boats and ocean liners ply the waters that Verrazano and Hudson once explored . The Lower Hudson Bioregion is a place of salt marshes and estuaries , sand dunes and barrier islands, bays and inlets and broad sandy beaches. The confluence of fresh and salt waters in the Lower Hudson estuary now provide a geologically rare habitat that supports a diversity of species, including our own. Tens of millennia ago, glacial cliffs towered over a vast plain, and the Hudson roared through a deep gorge to spill into the Atlantic. When the last glacier receded, it left in its wake a boulder-strewn landscape of moraines and kettle holes, drift and outwash. As the climate warmed, the ocean rose and flooded the low-lying coastal lands, drowning the Hudson canyon and creating an archipelago. Humans began to settle here ten to twelve thousand years ago, efficiently exploiting the rich resources of woodland, wetland, grassland, and maritime habitats that characterize the region. This is the site of New York City. I am an urban dweller by choice, but I also have a deeply ingrained respect for nature. I am appalled to see how megacities like New York overrun the land, depleting resources, destroying habitats, polluting water, air, and soil. This doesn’t lead me to conclude, however, that the city is an environmental scourge diametrically opposed to nature; rather, I blame a mind-set that shows no regard for nature whether one lives in city, suburb, or country. We tend to view nature and city in opposition. The city is always the place to escape from, and nature the place to escape to. Yearning for space, we harried town folk flee to the country. We viscerally react to feeling crowded— too many people, too many cars, too many featureless buildings blocking out the light. We are packed into subways and buses, clogged bumper-to-bumper on the highways, jostled in supermarket aisles. Space is at such a premium we rush to fill it—on the highway, on line at the supermarket, in the subway car—before someone else grabs it. We become aggressive and nasty in our jockeying for space, intent on claiming our bits and pieces of territory, and guarding them from the infringement of “the other guy.” In our desperate search for more space and breathing room, we pile into our cars and clog the highways, doing five miles an hour in our race to get away. We spill out of our cities into prefab suburbs to gain that little patch of lawn or fringe of woods that gives us an illusion of nature. And in our continued drive to return to the land, we gouge the landscape and bulldoze woods and farms so that we can entertain our various fantasies of country living. And what have we gained? Not a quiet, spacious haven if getting there means commuting through heavy weekend traffic to spend one or two nights “in the country.” Not an open vista if we fill up space with cars and housing developments and malls. Not unspoiled nature if we destroy piece by piece the very landscape that drew us there. Our desire to escape the city has ironically only contributed to the ongoing degradation of the environment, as sprawl consumes what’s left of nature. A more sustainable way to connect to nature is, paradoxically, by coming home to the city. When I came to New York City at the age of thirty-four, my vision of a vibrant , magical city with...

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