From today's NewYawkTimes. Some of you may consider this a tree hugger's viewpoint; I prefer to view it as a presentation of
a bigger picture of "us", the NYC area, and this little spinning ball we live on.
BR,mD

After the Storms, an Island of Calm — and Resilience

• By ERIC SANDERSON

Published: September 10, 2009

IT’S been eight years since the horrors of 9/11. The pain and the loss remain indelible. In New York, at least, the sadness is magnified by the lack of progress at the World Trade Center site. Efforts to reclaim and revive Lower Manhattan with a memorial and a complex of new towers have proceeded at a frustratingly glacial pace.

In light of this, it is possible to take some comfort from the past — to know that while the lives lost almost a decade ago will never return, this place on earth has the capacity to be reborn. This week, in fact, brings another anniversary, one that took place 400 years ago and underscores the manifold ways in which Manhattan renews itself.

In September 1609, the beach near the tip of the island was surrounded by thickly wooded hills. Passenger pigeons flew overhead; porpoises hunted in the harbor. Around 600 Native Americans lived on the island.

And they were the ones who, on Sept. 12, must have watched as a European, Henry Hudson, guided his small wooden ship into the Muhheakantuck (later Hudson’s) River, cleaving the waters with the narrow prow of history that would one day create New York City in its wake.

To the native Lenape people, whom Hudson met and traded with, Mannahatta meant “island of many hills.” Modern ecological research has shown that Mannahatta was an island of remarkable biological diversity. Its 55 ecosystems encompassed stately forests, rich wetlands, sandy beaches and rocky shores, eel grass meadows and deep marine waters.

This 25-square-mile island had 66 miles of streams and more ecosystems per acre than Yellowstone; more plant species than Yosemite; and more birds than the Great Smoky Mountains National Park does today.

There is a process in ecology called succession — the orderly advance of ecosystems from one state to another. There are moments of terror and unfathomable destruction, and then stability returns and life takes hold again, often with a firmer grip. This applies, of course, both to nature and to human society. As Jane Jacobs wrote, “Lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration.” Resilience is a hallmark of any successful system, whether for a forest, a wetland or a city.

Today, we honor the memory of all that was lost and sacrificed on 9/11. But in thinking back 400 years, in imagining the Lower Manhattan of the distant past, we can join that memory to another realization: that we, and the world we live in, have a remarkable capacity to recover and renew.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/op...nderson&st=cse

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