We launched from the Brooklyn Bridge Park; a convenient place, but a mile south of where I wanted to be.

It meant a tough paddle ahead, but we were a great crew: Michael Taussig, an anthropologist from Sydney Australia,

Lan Tuazon, an artist who I have explored with since 2001, and David Denz, an Austrian drummer who eats people like the rest of us for breakfast.

The water was rough and windy and I was worried about the boat.

We passed a group of kayakers close to shore. Their leader yelled something to us, but I couldn’t hear.

“I bet all those people wish they were out here.” I said, but I secretly wished that we were on the pier.

“Don’t worry guys,  it will be smooth sailing in another few minutes.” I said,

but the crew didn’t seem to mind.

We passed the Con Edison substation, and admired its sprawling grid-work.

“It’s funny how the city always pushes mounds of rubble to the outskirts…” said Lan.

I thought she was speaking metaphorically, but then I saw the actual mounds.

The building that housed Kara Walker’s giant sculpture last spring was completely torn down to make way for luxury condominiums.

“It is terrible what’s happening to the city.” said Michael.

He told us about the transformation of Sydney in the 1980’s, from a working waterfront to a waterfront view.

The loss inspired his essay ‘The Beach: A Fantasy’.

He described how the sea has disappeared for us, for lack of direct experience, and how it’s been constructed again in our imagination.

“Do you remember the first scene of Crocodile Dundee 2?” asked Michael.

None of us remembered, but I went back later and looked it up.

The movie opens with ‘Mick’ doing something alone in a boat.

He is dynamite fishing,

a common practice in Australia, we are meant to think.

The camera pans back to reveal that Crocodile Dundee is in the New York Harbor,

and the police find out at the same time we do.

They have him surrounded,

but they like him, and he doesn’t get in any trouble.

As the movie advances, we find out that other things are wrong with his life in New York City; he doesn’t fit in, his job sucks, and there are criminals trying to kill his girlfriend.

“It is a terrible movie of course.” said Michael.

The other thing I noticed when I watched the movie later, was that Crocodile Dundee goes by the name ‘Mick’, just like Michael Taussig.

I couldn’t help but think that the connection went deeper.

Maybe our Mick was a little homesick, just like the movie Mick, and seeing this city change reminded him Sydney.

Maybe our Mick too, was waiting for a band of criminals to pull him back into the life he knew and loved.

This was becoming a theme for the summer; my favorite launching spot in the Bronx had a brand new fence around it.

Luckily David, Sharon, and I found a more manageable fence to climb at the Hunts Point Riverside Park.

We lost a few hours searching, but seemed to have arrived just in time,

to see the Bronx River waking up.

“This is a real bird-watching trip!” said David, as he identified two kinds of Herons and Gulls, Great Egrets, a Gray Catbird, Red-winged Blackbird, American Kestrel, and a few Common Terns.

On one side of the river, industrial waste stacked up beautifully against it’s reflection,

and on the other, Soundview Park seemed like a wilderness.

Sometimes people ask if I give ‘tours’ in my boat. I always answer no, the passenger is usually the one giving me a tour.

Today was an exceptional case; I had two experts in the boat.

Sharon wrote The Other Islands of New York City with her husband Stuart Miller. Now in its 3rdh edition, the book has been my guide since I moved to New York; me and every other boater, artists, and NYC history enthusiast.

David is an artist who’s sculpture and installations explore… well.. exploring. He has made projects from the Everglades to the Amazon, London to New York, all  centered around our relationship to the natural environment.

Having them together in the Bronx River was like being given a tour of the Vatican by two popes.

The conversation ranged from facts about birds, islands, and urban wildlife habitat,

to childhood stories about family gossip, intrigue, and murder.

(Maybe that is because we were passing between Rikers Island and the Vernon C. Bain prison ship.)

Soon the crown jewel of all ‘other islands’ floated into view.

North Brother once housed a quarantine hospital for infectious disease, housing for WWII veterans, a reform school for teenage girls, and most famously, Typhoid Mary.

We couldn’t help but take a quick peek.

The thing that happened next, I have lived in fear of for ten years.

Sharon stepped on a nail hidden in the ivy.  As we pulled the rusty spike from her foot, an entire decade of trouble free boat trips flashed before my eyes.

But Sharon was tougher than the nail. We decided that David should go check out some sights while we sat still and chatted.

“Why do you think so many of the islands in New York City were used as quarantines and prisons?” I asked Sharon.

“The city expanded so quickly, the islands became a place to put unwanted people.” she said.

It’s funny to think about that now, with all New York’s high priced waterfront views and fancy parks,

but the ferry systems that once served the islands are too expensive to run, so the islands are left wild.

“I wonder what happened to David?” said Sharon. It had been almost an hour, and he wasn’t answering his phone.

It is amazing how quickly nature devoured these buildings, inhabited as recently as the 1960’s.

I saw trees growing up through basketball courts,

and eventually – David, unhurt, finding his way through the ruins.

The best building on campus is the old reform school.

It has an indoor gymnasium,

an old theater,

and I found graffiti from when Lan Tuazona, Starlee Kine, and I came here in 2006.

Back then it seemed like the building just needed a fresh coat of paint and some pest control, but now it’s actually falling over.

David’s Friend Bob Braine wrote the book Two Waters, that included a description of coming here in 1995.

It is a poetic look at urban waterscapes, the entangled history of places and the encroaching natural world – ‘mutant nature’ as Bob puts it.

Bob Braine also managed to drag back some really amazing junk from North Brother atop his hand-made boat.

We stopped and wondered if Bob would like this old park bench. “It would fit in the boat.” I told David.

“Let’s come back for it another time.” he said. Sharon was waiting.

Even though she felt pretty comfortable, Sharon had called her doctor.

“Go to the emergency room.” she had advised. There was no point risking infection.

That was easier said than done. My truck was still a few miles away, and Sharon’s family was starting to worry.

North Brother Island was performing the task it filled throughout history; providing a spot right next to the city that was difficult to get away from.

Prisoners shouted at us from the basketball courts of the Vernon C. Bain, but we couldn’t quite make what they were saying. “Something about our city… go New York City?” David said.

“OH COME ON, YOU GUYS! THAT IS NOT NICE!” Sharon shouted back. She had understood what they were saying right away;

“I know the type,” Sharon said.

As a teacher, journalist, Brooklyn native, and adventuring spirit, I think Sharon not only knows the type, but really likes them.

The prisoners, the outcasts who lived on islands in New York City – they were all people who needed a little more help navigating the modern world.

Maybe they were getting lost in the shuffle like the islands themselves.

It was a unique day for the Tide and Current Taxi; new birds, a remote island, contact with actual prison inmates, and a low level medical emergency.

The usual boat-launch on the Gowanus Canal was blocked by a huge new construction site.

The developer’s website chirpily announces 700 rental units in ‘one of the most desirable and hippest residential neighborhoods in all of New York’.

At least they got the weird milky-green color of the water right.

We found a parking lot next door where no one seemed to mind us slipping by quietly.

Eben is a Professor of Environmental Humanities, and author of the Multispecies Salon; a book, blog, and curatorial effort, that proposes a new way to study the disrupted boundaries between nature and culture.

Latasha Wright is a Doctor of cell and molecular biology and an educator. She currently operates out of the amazing Biobus / Biobase; a roving lab and interdisciplinary science center that makes high tech equipment and scientific expertise available to student groups all over New York.

Eben enlisted Latasha’s help last year to study the lives of freshwater microbes in the Gowanus Canal.

A lot of Eben’s work takes place in what he calls ‘blasted landscapes’,

and even here, where the negative impact of humans is so evident, we stop to admire a massive blue crab.

It is great to explore with Eben and Latasha. They are equal parts fascinated, grossed out,

extremely knowledgeable, and fun to be with.  I can see why their projects are so successful.

Eben fashions a suction device from some recycling to avoid touching the canal.

The boom has done a good job of catching some coal tar churned up by the new flushing tunnel,

but I wonder where it will go from here.

The coal tar sediment appears to be a living thing itself.

If there are microbes in there in there, it will certainly be a multi-species entanglement,

with coal tar as our cultural contribution.

Eben and Latasha will take it back to the Biobase’ high powered microscopes, and find out.

As the Gowanus canal turns toward the bay, we open into one of the most visually stunning ‘blasted landscapes’ around.

Iridescent residue from the manufactured gas plants that contaminated this place for years.

But we still find some green living stuff.

Eben is looking for something specific here, microscopic fungi called chytrids.

“These things give “vibrant matter” a whole new meaning.” says Eben, in reference to the Jane Bennett book.

Chytrid fungi are causing mass extinctions in amphibians, like the Golden Frog he researches in Panama.

Eben explained how frogs in impacted environments like the Gowanus, seem to be doing better because the Chytrids don’t thrive here.

“Wow!” I said, “so the frogs who like industrial landscapes are doing better!”

I imagined a frog enjoying the site of all this industrial decay as much as I do.

“Well, its not that they like it,” said Eben, “it’s just that they die off in the other places.”

I remembered something Kurt Voneget wrote about the ‘Origin of the Species’, how Darwin’s theories “did more to stabilize people’s volatile opinions of how to identify success or failure than any other tome,” and I realized I was doing something like that.

This hunt for chytrids dovetails with one of Latasha’s biobase classes about how life survives in urban environments. This summer they are concentrating on the East River.

She has students taking samples, looking at things under microscopes, building habitat for oysters, “unveiling the unseen world of the river.”

I asked her whether there is more life in the city above the water or below. I wanted the answer to be under water, of course.

“Well – above the water there are a lot of things in the city, if you think about all the insects, and microbes.” said Latasha.

But Latasha and Eben explained that under water, there is a greater diversity of life. They started to list things “Cnidarians, mollusks, amphipods, decapods,

nematode worms, polychaete worms, annelid worms, nemtode worms – those all look like worms to us but they are radically different.”

They spoke each name like a fondly remembered classmate.

I guess not that many things decided to climb onto land, I started to say, but then thought better of it.

We were probably just stranded here when the tide went out.

On a day like today, I am happy to be stranded here in such good company.

My favorite beach on earth is on the north side of Coney Island, facing the Verrazano Bridge.

Where else can you find a perfect stretch of glittering sand, ideal for launching a boat,

just yards away from the greatest junk pile ever.

Susannah Ray has always photographed the water, but after Hurricane Sandy, the city shoreline and people around it became her singular obsession.

The tittle for her project A Further Shore, refers to the reaches of the New York City, but also to how the city looks from out here.

Catherene Despont is a writer, editor of Intercourse Magazine, and co-director of education at Pioneer Works in Red Hook.

She is working on a novel about an island in France, structured around it’s circumambulation.

On the 4th of July, she walked the length of Manhattan and all the way to Brooklyn, a ten hour journey that ended in fireworks.

I told her the next time she makes a trip like that, we should cross the river by boat instead of a bridge.

We floated past some of the iconic Coney Island Creek sights,

and saw how things had moved around during Sandy.

Because of its low bank, the creek flooded into Gravesend Bay and the Coney Island neighborhoods during the hurricane.

City officials used the term ‘backdoor flooding’, as though the creek was somehow in the wrong place,

rather than the infrastructure.

Susannah has photographed this area before from land,

but now we saw things that are invisible from shore.

An NYPD skywatch tower spied us as we paddled close to a new construction site,

and we waved to the construction workers up above.

Could there really be no windows looking out at the water in this new building, we wondered.

Everything here seems to turn its back to the water.

As we looked up at the Belt Parkway, Susannah realized that this was a spot she always saw from the road.

“This is where I always wanted to be!” she said.

On the way back, Catherine and Susannah talked about the difference between digital and film photography.

Digital works ok for getting into the action, they agreed, but film does more.

Instead of capturing the moment, it makes one. They said it has to do with handing over some agency to the machine.

“Do you have good conversations when you are out in the boat?” asked Catherine.

“The best.”  I said. “I think because we are all facing the same direction.”

I wonder now if the boat is like a film camera, demanding its own agency to creat a new moment.

It also helps to be held captive for a certain amount of time.

A few days later, Susannah scanned her negatives and sent us some images (like this one). I suddenly understood what they were saying about letting the machine take over.

The film camera seems uncanily attracted to the right moment, and shows things that we didn’t even notice at the time.

We notice something wonderful on the way to City Island,

the setting moon and rising sun, across from each other on the horizon, visible at the same time.

It took a minute for me to understand, but there it was: the moon and the sun were pulling all the water on earth to opposite ends.

It made the tide extremely low right were we were,

a perfect day to visit islands that are only visible at low tide.

As we paddled through the marina we saw Lifeboat Louie pulling a hulking pile of flotsam treasure.

“That guy is famous.” I told Antone and Sara, but they were impressed already.

The water was perfectly glassy,

as we floated into Eastchester Bay.

We could see High Island,

and the Chimney Sweeps,

and found our way with the map in Other Islands of New York City.

Sara is a friend of the authors, and brought the book along. I told her it has always been my guide.

Of all the special islands in NYC, my favorites are East and South Nonations Islands. “Legend has it that Dutch and English colonists were unwilling to fight over these two adjoining reefs… so they became owned by no nation.” says the book.

They only emerge at low tide,

and host so many natural things, that I was afraid to step out of the boat for fear of hurting something.

“Just creating an oportunity for birds.” said Antone.

Earlier he had pointed out a violet color in the waves, some bit of light stretched by reflection, more visible here than in the sky.

I thought about his artwork, and how he looks for the unnoticed and implied.

We came to an island that was under construction and spoke for a while with the foreman.

I imagined the contentment he must feel, to work in such a pretty spot, but I was wrong. “Is this your dream home?” I asked. He paused for a while. “It’s my nightmare.”

Sara pulled up some information about the house as we paddled away, and there was a picture of the foreman.

We were seeing a lot of famous people, and it wasn’t even 8 a.m.

Our next stop was Huckleberry Island.

Part of Sara’s practice is a ‘Mindfulness in Nature’ art project.

It’s based on Mark Coleman’s teaching in his book Awake in the Wild. Sara thinks it’s important to connect with natural objects in the city too.

“Can you meditate on a rock?” I asked. “Can you meditate on another person?” asked Antone.

“Or how about the green moss? It might be cool to connect with something that is going to be under water in a few hours.”

Sara guided us while we emptied our minds and absorbed every stimulus in our surroundings.

We concentrated on each sensation one by one; we touched, tasted, felt, and listened to the moss. We felt the island underneath, and listened to the things in the air all around us.

Talking about it later, I realized how much energy I spend communicating rather than perceiving.

When our meditation was over, the moss was disappearing under water.

This is Antone’s picture of South Nonations Island. I realized later that I didn’t take many pictures that day. The events exist strongly in my memory; the vision of the sun and moon, the violet waves, the moss disappearing into the sea. Maybe pictures are like talking, a way to communicate that reduces my awareness just a little bit.

Thank you Antone and Sara for a great day!

William asked if we could go to a place with fast current, tall buildings, and not much wind,

to test a special camera mount he made for shooting video on the water.

It’s not easy to find a place with all those things, but if you are looking for no wind, it’s best to get up early.

We set out into the Hutchinson River just after sunrise.

Time seemed to stop as we floated quietly through the reflected landscape.

People often ask me, “What’s the most unusual thing you have ever seen out there?”

It is always hard to say; nothing seems normal when you wake up at 4 am.

This was really strange, though. When we paddled closer to the steam, the water was almost too hot to touch.

Up close, we could see a hot spring coming out of the rocks.

At high tide, the water must cool the spring so that it doesn’t steam. But at low low tide, a hot spring is revealed on the Bronx coast!

Charles photographed life around the spring while William set up his cameras.

“My work is all smoke and mirrors.” William joked.

The camera rig is amazing; it will take two videos at the same time, each image framed infinity by the other. The video will surround the viewer when played back in the gallery.

William had tested it in a pool, but this was to be it’s first shot in the wild.

A tidal eddy moved the camera in slow circles.

We paddled around the other side of a small island, so that the camera could be by itself.

We paddled slowly, but I could tell William was anxious.

When it floated back into view, the rig was spinning beautifully in the tide.

“The video looks great!” said William.

With the test complete, we decide to paddle up river.

The Hutchinson seemed like a microcosm of city evolution.

The pure design of Coop City,

gave way to deconstruction.

Later on, Charles pointed out the difference in traveling up river rather than down,

with time unfolding strangely, like Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkenss’.

This is Charles’ photograph of a heron. He will use these for drawings of the New York City waterfront.

His project started with an interest in the Newtown Creek, a kind of satirical look at our disjointed contemporary life. But then I think his fascination with the waterfront took over.

There is something Conradian too, about the parallel reality of the river, a story within a story.

Being here is a commitment to a strange disjointed reality, and getting up early.

When we got back home, William sent us images from the first test.

You can see William Lamson’s current show at Fergus McCaffrey through July, but look out for how this project develops next year!

We set out for Ruffle Bar at dawn on a windy day.

I wanted get across Jamaica Bay before the wind picked up,

but Gabby and Drea were such good paddlers, that I didn’t need to worry.

Manhattan shimmered in the distance.

We didn’t have much of an idea of what we were looking for out there.

I wanted to collect some junk for sculpture,

and Drea brought a set of watercolors to paint,

but we began to see something strange right when we landed; the entire shore was ringed with seaweed,

drying in strange formations.

The seaweed seemed to form a mulch down in the tidal pools,  then lift out onto the taller grass at high tide.

This naturally occurring cycle was basically making paper; a strong, fibrous version of what you would pay 8$ a sheet for at New York Central Art Supply.

In some places, grass was growing through like hair.

There was something gross and wonderful about the skin, and it was all over the island.

It was slow walking in the marsh, so we waded out into the water.

We could feel the seaweed slipping around our ankles.

Back out on the beach, we took a closer at the washed up seaweed.

Even before the mulching process, it seemed to grow in perfect sheets,

and was filled with tiny horseshoe crabs shells.

We could see signs of old structures; houses or docks used by oyster and clam fishermen in the 1930’s.

Drea found a painting of Jesus,

and we headed back to the boat.

On the way back we talked about Audre Lord, feminism, feeling,

and we discussed the various undertakings and interests of friends we have in common.

Even though it was still early, we had already accomplished so much, and we were ready for a drink.

Waves began to break around the boat as the wind picked up.

Back on Barren Island, Drea worked on some paintings.

I thought they captured the color and feeling of the day, and some of the raindrops were recorded in the paintings as well.

Looking back at her beautiful watercolors when I made this post,

I couldn’t figure out why we didn’t cut off pieces of the seaweed paper for Drea to use in her paintings.

Well Gaby and Drea, we have another mission if you ever want to go out in the boat again!

We started our journey at Agnes Denes’ beautiful new sculpture,’The Living Pyramid‘,

and swung by to pick up Sarah from a beach around the corner.

Sarah is launching a performance called 36.5 in the Netherlands this summer, then traveling with it all around the world.

During the performance, she stands in one place through an entire tidal cycle. It takes over 13 hours, and is an incredible act of endurance and bravery. It also makes a really great image, which you can see in her pilot versions around the U.S..

We came into an eddy just south of Hell Gate. The current was very strong, but a huge back-surge of water held us completely still. It was a good place to talk about the tides.

“It amazes me that there are people who plan their lives around the cycles of the moon instead of the sun.” said Sarah.

That was true about us, at least for this tidal cycle.

The eddy shifted slightly and nudged us into the fast moving current.

We could see big up-swells in the current, pushing up from the bottom of Hell Gate.

Riding over them was spooky, like slipping off the top of something moving.

Without paddling, we were riding with the current at almost 5 miles per hour.

“I guess that is like a slow jog.” said Kara, putting everything into perspective.

It was hard to get a handle on what we were seeing, moving along so quietly in the shadow of a massive, roaring machine.

In the 1960’s, The Ravenswood Generating Station was the largest electric generating facility in the world.

Con Ed was required to sell it in 1999, during the city’s complicated de-regulation strategy.

Now it is owned by the TransCanada Corporation and supplies power to about 21 percent of New York City.

Long Island City rose into view.

Kara had walked down here before, and she knew about a little spot under the pier; a circular cut-out open to the sky.

We waited down there, hoping someone would see,

but no one paid us any mind.

Out from under the pier, we looked for a spot to rest.

Hunter’s Point South is slated for development later his year. One day this will look like all the blue glass towers that line the shore of Long Island City,

but for now, this prime New York City real estate belongs to weeds and trespassers.

Sarah brought ‘stroopwafel’ from the Netherlands.

It was the first time Kara had ever eaten one, and we tried to photograph her expression of amazment and joy.

We talked about Sarah’s 36.5 project and where she might perform when it comes to New York.

I thought she would want to find a place where the current was not strong, but where you could see the city.

Once during a performance in San Francisco, a huge wake from a boat knocked her off the rock she was using for balance.

She was devastated; there were hours left in the performance and she had lost her position.

But when she talked to people who had seen the performance, she realized that no one had really noticed, and it was an interesting part of the documentation.

“I realized that sometimes you just get knocked off your rock.” she said.

“And that is ok, you just keep going.”

Sto Len and Kelie Bowman are artists (music, sound, performance, painting, books, sculpture, and all things in between) who also run the great Cinder’s Gallery in NYC.

Sto’s beautiful aqueous-surface-monoprints have led him to the Newtown Creek.

It seems fitting for him to work in a place where the mixing of oil and water is such a huge issue.

Sto got right to work on our trip into the creek on Tuesday.

I couldn’t believe how well it worked!

The oil stuck right to the paper in amazing forms, just how it looked on the surface of the water,

like microcosms of this distressed landscape.

I knew about a place where there would be lots of good stuff floating on the surface of the water.

The Dutch Kills waterway is like a museum of broken infrastructure.

Junk is left right there until the water takes it,

and soon we saw big swirls of coagulated something on the surface.

Sto was ready to work larger.

The boat became a little printshop,

and we used the rocky bank as a drying rack.

Far into the Kills, someone was tending a beautiful garden.

“Is this where you live?” We asked. “No, it’s just a wood shop,” he answered, “This is where I work.”

There were other people working on the water too, more people than I have ever seen here at one time.

Down at the end, we floated up to one of the massive Combined Sewer Outfalls of the Newtown Creek.

It had rained the night before, and the water was covered with oil and debris from the sewer.

It was almost too gross to print,

so we decided to keep exploring.

We passed a perfect oil slick.

There actually are less of these in the creek than you would think, maybe because of organizations like the Newtown Creek Alliance who are paying such close attention.

Got it!

The crew started to get hungry,

so we looked for some place nicer to stop.

How about the sewage treatment plant?

I know it sounds weird, but the sewer plant’s ‘Nature Walk‘ is a great place to hang out. The park was designed by a long time NYC small boat navigator, George Trakas and he made sure it had a good boat landing.

We sat and watched a bunch of junked cars get loaded into a barge.

“There is so much trash in the world.” said Kelie.”Where does it all go?”

We talked about pollution for a while and it was nice,

After spending the last couple years thinking about ‘Object Oriented Ontology‘, and the importance of things-in-themselves,

I wonder if “thing power” is another fancy way of doing nothing.

“I think people should have to deal with their own trash for one month,” said Kelie.

“It would give people a sense of how much trash they actually make.”

We all agreed.

Sto took the prints back to his studio and worked on them a little more. Some he left exactly as they came out of the water, and some like this one, he worked back into with ink and pigment.

In a show at Ramiken Crucible last April, Gavin Kenyon made a room of beautifully stacked columns.

He has perfected a technique of mold making with soft-forms.

I saw something in the Harlem River last year that I thought he would like.

I didn’t quite understand how it was made, but I thought Gavin would know,

about an unusual formation of cement pilings under a pier,

that seem to have been cast inside zippered bags.

Some of the old pilings are still visible, and it looked like a retrofit.

The zipper would allow a bag to be placed around an exsisting column.

Once the column was cast, the bag could be left to deteriorate.

“Yep, that’s what it is.” said Gavin. He pointed to the top of a column where the old piling was still visible.

He said the bag would protect the cement from washing out under water while it cured.

Here are some of the old pilings next to the retrofit ones, and you can see why they needed some help.

It was like being in a cathedral with hundreds of Gavin Kenyon sculptures,

each one gently curved, beautifully animate, and solid as rock.

“What do you think, Gavin?” I asked.

“I like it.” He said.

We traveled north along the Harlem River and looked at some of the other piers.

The city seawall is amazing here, with sewer outfalls, and sub-structure,

all covered with tiny living things.

You can really see what the city is made of,

and you can see how it will be unmade.

Structures have changed even since I was here last year,

revealing strange things about their interior.

Brittany Prater is an artist and filmmaker,

who’s beautiful video work seems to speak about the cycles of life and desire.

She is working on a documentary about radioactive waste in Ames Iowa, her hometown,

where tons of high level radioactive particles were dumped.

She uncovered the history of the town’s secret involvement with the Manhattan Project and it’s disastrous health affects on residents there.

The crew seemed quiet, absorbed in thought as the day grew hotter.

We had been to three boroughs in just three hours,

and we landed back to the salt marsh,

where the ‘Randall’s Island Park Alliance’ has done a great job of restoring this landscape to how it might have looked soon after glaciers carved the N.Y. harbor into being.

Back in Brooklyn, Gavin invited us to his studio.

Seeing the layers and accumulation, the sewing machines, and the molds themselves, I though that it wasn’t just the soft-mold process that connected his sculpture to the pier,

it was the idea of accumulating one formula after another,

and the desire to see how it all comes apart.