The Summer of Trees

Recapturing summer whimsy by connecting to NYC’s great trees

Do you remember when you were a kid and summers felt magical? In Virginia, the summer meant heat, and more importantly, it meant humidity. Cotton t-shirts clung to tacky skin on field trips to a local park. At night, the sound of crickets and cicadas wove a symphony of sound through the rustle of trees.

This was pre-cell phone, so teen magazines and roll-on glitter at slumber parties and Nancy Drew and friendship bracelets during the day instead of homework and waking up early felt like holding a winning lottery ticket.

Except.

That’s not all true. As an only child, an introvert, and someone with a severe phobia of bugs, summers were magical, but they also meant more forced time outside. Outside, there were bugs. Bugs that flew right at your face, like butterflies, and flew right by your ear, like bees, or stung you on the leg while you weren’t looking, like wasps. (Wasps have been on my list since that day as a child, by the way.) So, I can only help but picture the immense surprise on baby Jas’s face if someone were to tell her that I now describe myself as “outdoorsy” and wish I could go camping for three months a year. 

If you’ve seen my About page, then you already know I’m a fashion designer turned environmentalist now working at an environmental nonprofit. I’ll sketch in a few more of the details by saying that I fell in love with national parks when I visited the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park while living in LA to heal my NYC burnout. I fell in love. That love has led to a careful, but fun and often sweaty, forway into becoming someone who happily chooses to spend time outdoors instead of fleeing inside. Turns out, you can still read your library book from a park bench under a tree and from the couch. The couch has fewer bugs, but outside is where I feel the magic.

Sibley Tree Identification Flash Cards (Link to purchase)

As an adult, I don’t exactly have three paid months off to go camping, so I created the Summer of Trees. The Summer of Trees combines my desire to learn 12 North American trees with the whimsy of a slightly-organized traipse around New York City’s outdoor spaces more than her bars. I knew I wanted to learn 12 North American trees by the end of December, but a fortuitous wander around REI one Friday as I waited for a friend to meet up with me for dinner led me to the first piece of the summer’s formalized plan. I’m not an impulse shopper by nature, but the design of the Sibley Tree Identification Flash Cards was perfect and for $20, this was an easy learning-aid to purchase on a whim. Another Friday, waiting for the same friend to meet me at The Poster Museum (I recommend visiting, by the way!), I came across the Great Trees of New York Map.

Great Trees of New York Map (Link to purchase)

The Summer of Trees was born.

I decided that to support my flash card learning, I would visit all the Manhattan trees on the Great Trees of New York Map. If any one of the trees in Manhattan matches one of the 12 I’ve decided to learn from my flashcards, I’ll take the flash card with me to reinforce my learning. Whether I have a corresponding flashcard or not doesn’t really matter and I don’t have a set schedule for when to visit them all (hence the “slight” organization), but I have a plan. And a map. And a deck of flashcards. Along with a desire to learn about, enjoy, greet, and give thanks to our wonderful ancestors and neighbors. 

It feels like the best parts of summer camp - being outside, getting your hands dirty, and an adventure. You can join along by following me on Instagram (see my story highlights for the first few trees) or checking back on my blog throughout the summer as I document the fun. If you want some more-than-slightly-organized climate events straight to your inbox every Sunday, you can subscribe to my free newsletter published through Substack.

in whimsy,

P.S. I don’t earn any money from the links I shared above!

P.P.S If you’re someone like me who loves to listen to nature sounds at home, I enjoyed this video during the day and this one in the evening recently. Sometimes, you can capture a feeling of adventure from the couch. 💚