Today was a beautiful day, sunny and warm without the humidity that dumped on Long Island in a heavy down pour yesterday night (I, as an upstater, finally understand all the hullabaloo concerning Sandy's effect on the area). Vince and I opened the day by waking up and driving down to Staten Island - windows cranked down, radio cranked up. Upon arrival, we signed in, then spent the morning planting trees with 200 some odd other volunteers, as a segment of the 1 Million Trees foundation. As we soaked in the sun, wallowed in the dirt, and piled up empty plant buckets, I found myself feeling like I was back home: Perhaps it was the feeling of community the activity gave me.
After the volunteer effort, Vince and I drove back to Long Island and spent the rest of the day kayaking on the southern shore, near East Rockaway Beach. As I sang the Ramones song in my head ("Rockaway Beach"), I snagged a couple of panorama shots, which is much more difficult that you would think in choppy ocean water.
After the volunteer effort, Vince and I drove back to Long Island and spent the rest of the day kayaking on the southern shore, near East Rockaway Beach. As I sang the Ramones song in my head ("Rockaway Beach"), I snagged a couple of panorama shots, which is much more difficult that you would think in choppy ocean water.
Vince was kind enough to catch my camera and take a picture of me in my first solo salt water kayak experience.
These panoramas are not meant to capture hustle and bustle, but instead the tranquility and sensory elements of the water. Kayaking is not about strength and speed, but developing a harmonic pace that allows the participant to feel a sense of power and control that one does not feel while being rushed and in a hurry (compare getting somewhere via subway with transfers to getting there by kayak).
While it took me a while to get into a pace, Vince and I were able to cover a lot of ground in little town. Instead of inspecting design elements, we instead opted to seek out bird's nests and relics that had sank under water onto shallow sand bards decades ago. What this experience translates to me, from the perspective of design, is the idea of a blank slate never truly being blank. Any development that would take place out on this water would effect the already lively, but seemingly naked, landscape. Digging holes to plant the trees in this morning illustrates a similar point: Vince and I began competing to find the most interesting garbage on the ground, the highlights of which included a coat hanger, an axe head, and a muffler. To sum up, each site we as designers shape, is extremely unique, even in ways that may not be visible to you at first glance.
The below image is an old bottle Vince spotted in the shallows near an osprey's nest on an inundated salt marsh. How he sighted it in the brackish similarly colored shore is a wonder to me.
