Pandora’s box. Imagine a giant hand flipping the city upside down and shaking hard. These are the strange images that might fall off at random.

An old barge turned museum, flowers growing in old boots, here is a perfectly normal Brooklyn scene. Red Hook, to be precise. Granted, it could probably be Holland. Or even France or Germany for that matter, both having lots of waterways. But then I would have called this post “Das Boot”…

In Staten Island’s Loretto Uniquely Deserted Area, one feels at peace. There are few people around, nature prevails, inner calm settles in. But no matter how hard one tries to forget the reality of that location, it is still part of the Five Boroughs and as such, yields an urban-rated illusion of escape.

For a real dose of countryside, what the French call “la campagne”, one must be willing to travel a little further – distance-wise at least because the time spent in transit between city-home comfort and wilderness needs not be greater.

Marie and I were recently invited for a short weekend over by our friends Gabrielle, Craig and Bess. Location: way outta town. Directions: get to Grand Central, catch the Poughkeepsie-bound train and jump off in Tarrytown. Estimated travel time: 20 minutes on the subway from our Brooklyn home to the train station and another 45 minutes on the train off Manhattan and into the New York State proper. “We’ll be waiting for you at the station in Tarrytown.”

We were on time. Metro North trains actually run on schedule and they hit the tracks with almost as much accuracy as Swiss trains winding through meadows and grazing fields. We had traveled with dizzying speed through rat-owned subway tunnels, the humbling vault of Grand Central and a very comfortable real train on board which we followed the Hudson River northwards until the city had receded in our awareness to the state of a simple blister, healing and soon-to-be-forgotten.

Gabrielle was waiting for us at the station and as we stepped off the train and into the unknown, greeted in the car by a very friendly, pretty, smiling and incredibly alert and smart three year old Bess who had more conversation than most of our city acquaintances, we took a deep breath and welcomed an old friend, the feeling of being out of place, out of known boundaries, out of routine and into discovery mode.

We were greeted and hosted with perfect hospitality. Craig is Livestock Manager at the Stone Barns and Gabrielle Editor in Chief of Edible Manhattan and Brooklyn. We spent most of our day walking with Gabrielle and Bess through idyllic countryside, a long and powerfully exhausting hike, only to come back home to a very nice dinner and restful night.

Hopping on the train after coffee the next morning, we went back to a beloved black cat who purred his hunger to us while trying to remain dignified. Then I took a closer look at my pictures. Not too shabby, I thought, but not so great either. The thing is, when the mind relaxes too much, so does the shutter.

Still. Here are a few snapshots – and more of Marie’s – of what one finds less than an hour away from the madness of Times Square.

In need of exotic freshness, I once drew our public transit maximum range circle on a map, its centre pinned on our Brooklyn apartment. It turned out the most distant point I could reach aboard the MTA subway system was the very bottom tip of Staten Island, about 30 kilometres from home as the crow flies.

Staten Island is the southernmost New York City borough and it is also the emptiest. Served by only four bridges and a ferry, the island is awkwardly isolated from the rest of the world, both geographically and in (not so) popular culture.

Tourist-like round-trip ferry crossings notwithstanding, I had previously visited the island on three occasions. The first, in 2009, had resulted in a poison oak-induced ordeal that lasted over a month. The second and third with our friend Frank were recent and yielded beautiful autumn colours, shy salamanders and even a tick or two.

Then the doors closed squarely on her head and she dropped the mirror
So while my Staten Island fate has improved, I still venture unto the island with great suspicion and a touch of reluctance. However curiosity prevails and so, just last month, I conducted an assault on uncharted territory, and then revisited with Marie, walking some 25 km over three days.

I had picked as a target an area close to the end of the single open air subway line, 17 stations and some 30 minutes away from the northern St George station connecting to the Manhattan Ferry. The subway, which looks and behaves more like a train, is usually mostly empty but manages to be rich in colorful characters. On the first trip, a middle-age lady wearing a lot of pink and having had more than enough to drink in the morning – it was then early afternoon – was trying to touch up her make-up aboard the moving train.

Her efforts hampered by low light and the moving car, she stood hesitantly by the door while working in front of her pocket mirror. The train stopped in a station. The doors opened, and as the light was better on the dock, she leaned half way out, still applying her make-up. Then the doors closed squarely on her head and she dropped the mirror. I swallowed hard. The move, or rather the lack thereof, would have humbled even Peter Sellers.

Getting off the train, I found myself near a heavily forested area on the edge of a conservatively suburban zone. My trusted Android phone guiding me via Google Maps, I crossed the woods – identified as a State Forest – on a wide path at the entrance of which Marie later found the following entries in the visitor log: “Question: What are you planning to do here? Answers: 1: Birding. 2: Dog walk. 3: Observe + enjoy nature. 4: Nature & shit.” Interpret however you want.

I spotted a first osprey above a pond deep in the woodsI spotted a first osprey above a pond deep in the woods and, my telephoto at the ready, snapped a few pictures of it flying back home from an ocean bearing. I later realized when I saw the shots on my computer it had been carrying a good size fish.

There is an odd, open area between the forest and a part of the park adjacent to the sea, that surprises the visitor with a school and church that seem unlikely to attract much local attendance. Further towards the shore, a road and a thick line of trees mark the boundary with the Mt. Loretto Unique Area, a vast and rather unusual section of beautiful grasslands inhabited by the highest concentration of wildlife I have witnessed in New York.

In my three visits there, I spotted multiple ospreys – including two carrying fish, a handful of wild rabbits, a meter-long snake, multiple groundhogs and their young, a swan that flew right by me in a cartoon-like fashion, a couple of yellow-billed cuckoos having… well, having fun, an ibis, herons, frogs, ducks, geese, squirrels, entire flocks of sea birds – mostly brants, countless smaller species of birds I could not identify and a few baboons. Ok, just kidding about the baboons.

Where else in a NYC park can one see more animals than human beings on a weekend?None of these are exceptional, of course, but the concentration was refreshing and not even Jamaica Bay seems to match it. The other wonderful attribute of this place is that being so remote, it is for all practical purposes deserted. Where else in a NYC park can one see more animals than human beings on a weekend?

The shoreline is interesting without being stunning. Much garbage has unfortunately washed up and the cost lacks a bit of three-dimensional perspective, New Jersey barely drawing a dark flat line on the opposite side of the bay. But again, birds are everywhere, the vegetation is lush and the silence, one of the best I’ve experienced anywhere in the city.

I am splitting this in two posts. Stay tuned for the critters. For now here are the views.