Arctic New York

Twice I've traveled north of the Arctic Circle, but yesterday visitors from north of the Arctic Circle came to my neighborhood in New York City.

After a heavy snowfall, I was walking in Battery Park at the southern end of Manhattan when I spotted some handsome birds swimming in the Hudson River. They proved to be brants — sea geese who summer in the Arctic and winter on the East Coast of the United States. I learned that they have glands that enable them to drink sea water and filter out the salt and that they like to eat eelgrass and crustaceans. I hope that New York gave them a friendly welcome.

My walk was rewarding in other ways as well. The architecture of trees and grasses was particularly beautiful against the snow, and the cold, moody skies seemed to suit Battery Park's war memorials and the sculpture formerly in the plaza of the World Trade Center, which is now in the park.

In general, I find there's a lot to be said for off-season travel. In addition to smaller crowds and lower prices, as I found yesterday, there can be wonderful, unexpected experiences.

Terese

Fall Foliage in New York City

Though some people may feel the need to head for New England to see masses of brilliantly colored autumn leaves punctuated by white church steeples, New York also has wonderful autumnal displays. In Manhattan's Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park, we have Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's legacies, and now, in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, we have another great landscape artist at work. In an exposed marine environment that must resemble in some ways his native Holland, Piet Oudolf has massed tall grasses and flowers to create a poetic, wild-looking enclave that is, in fact, carefully planned. Oudolf's garden is less than four years old and will only grow more lovely as it matures, but already it gleams. It's worth a trip to Lower Manhattan to wander along its serpentine paths.

Terese