A few weeks into the coronavirus pandemic, Steve Maing, his partner and their 2-year-old daughter, Rosie, discovered the spot that would make their life in locked-down New York bearable. Steps from a busy street in Queens, a trail in Forest Park leads down through thick woods to a pond fringed with reeds. It used to be deserted most days, but now New Yorkers in search of uncrowded green space are venturing deeper and more often into the natural areas — forests, wetlands and grasslands — that make up a third of New York City’s parks. “It’s like walking through a secret door,” Mr. Maing said one recent morning as he and Rosie watched a wading heron. Across the country, park workers say that more and more visitors, restless from a spring spent mostly indoors, are exploring wilder segments of cities, like old-growth forest in the Bronx, a salt marsh in Manhattan and woodlands in Minneapolis and Baltimore.

Source: New York Times July 28, 2020 06:56 UTC