Leaning In

Late last spring, I began a daily cycling regime that included an early morning circuit through a coastal peninsula on the Jersey Shore, a six-mile prong of barrier beach bordering the southeastern edge of Lower New York Bay. Home to a disused army base and proving ground, the spit is one in a group of natural and artificial landforms comprising Gateway National Recreation Area, America’s first urban national park. Later that summer, confined from hip surgery, I thought much about this particular stretch of coast, my systematic excursions within it, and the complexity of natural and cultural enterprise I came to discover there. Roughened dunes and refuge forests. Moldering ramparts and deserted concessions. Expectant piers and parking lots. I marveled at the industry of gulls. The agency of wind and of water. The substance and significance of decay. The conference and discipline of birds. What were the value of these observations, I wondered. What are these recollections worth to me now? I believe that regions are reflected in our everyday surroundings, and so to understand them we should lean into places, not back from them; lean into the flow of life and attend to where we happen to be. For me, turning an awareness of the immediate into an encounter with a region amplifies the sometimes curious but crucial interrelationship of inhabitants and conditions within a landscape, both in effect and potentiality. Each conveying insight to the other; through one thing, learning another.