Quote of the Day (Rachel Carson, on Spring and the Healing ‘Refrains of Nature’)

“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”—American scientist and nature writer Rachel Carson (1908-1964), The Sense of Wonder (1956)

Over the past week, as the dread and horror of the coronavirus have spread, I have felt even more urgently the need to get out of the house. My office, library, and theaters were closed. The other day, I was even surprised to see the gates locked at a local stadium where I often walk around the track.

It was with relief, then, and with a sense of joy that I discovered Foschini Park, a few miles from where I live in Bergen County, NJ, to be open. I got to photograph what I came for: signs of spring on the first day of the season. 

There were few people out in this nearly 28-acre park on this sunlit day: a couple and their son on bicycles, four or five kids playing baseball, and two joggers, running separately.  (Surely glad to comply with the federal government’s new directive: stay six feet away from the nearest person.) 

Maybe, at some point a few weeks or months ago, more people will rediscover the hope generated by nature that Ms. Carson alludes to.

Photo of the Day: Tree, Marsh, River, Foschini Park, Hackensack, NJ

Over a month ago, I took this picture of Foschini Park in Hackensack, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ.

Photo of the Day: Diamonds Are a Boy’s Best Friend

With apologies to Marilyn Monroe, diamonds—involving baseballs, not billionaires—are a boy’s best friend. 

Or, at least, they were for me in Little League, and even as an overgrown kid now, more than four decades later, as I devour the daily major league box scores.  I’m convinced I might have even come to love mathematics if only any of my teachers had told me that the diamond was obviously the most perfect shape in the world—and then pulled out a picture of a professional baseball stadium to prove it.

Several weeks ago, I took this picture of the baseball field in Foschini Park in Hackensack, NJ, a few miles from where I live. It is both specific and emblematic, a field of dreams that never really die.

Photo of the Day: Store and River

A week ago, while walking around in Hackensack’s Foschini Park, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ, I took this picture of a Sears store, looming above the Hackensack River in the foreground.

Photo of the Day: Beauty at the Fork in the Walk

Among the sites I enjoyed the most this past Saturday in the nearly 28-acre Foschini Park in Hackensack, NJ, was this little tree and the walkway just beyond it.