The Ramblers

For Bryan and the Rowlets

Sunday, November 24, 2013

If we expect to suffer, we are anxious.

—Charles Darwin,

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

—Charles Darwin,
On the Origin of Species

Best Stress Reliever—Birdwatching with Clio Marsh

C
ity stress getting to you? (Be honest: of course it is.) Wander over to Turtle Pond on Sundays at nine a.m. for an invigorating amble through the Ramble with bird enthusiast Clio Marsh. A curator in the Department of Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History and an adjunct professor in evolutionary biology up at Columbia, Marsh has a knack for spotting theatrical avian displays—and for communing with nature-seeking New Yorkers. Nota bene: Forget the wilderness of online dating; turns out a Central Park sojourn can lead to love. Marsh herself met her current amour, hotelier and Northern Irish import Henry Kildare (who will open his fifth boutique hotel, the Here Inn, on the Upper West Side this fall) after one of her walks.