Green-Wood Cemetery, in the middle of Brooklyn, feels unexpectedly wild. The 478 acres are alive with big old trees, flowers, bees, fungus, birds, wild and feral animals. Yes, it's also full of dead people — the “permanent residents” of Green-Wood, as they refer to them, comprise a Who’s Who of 19th century New York: famous actresses and Civil War generals, industrialists, businessmen, developers. There's Boss Tweed, there's Samuel Morris, inventor of the Morse code. But a visit to Green-Wood makes it clear that this cemetery is for the living. It's not just a burial ground. It's a breeding ground. A place of birth and renewal and life and excitement.

Join Wild Talk producer Matt Dellinger as he strolls among the graves with Joseph Charap, Green-Wood’s Director of Horticulture, and Sara Evans, the Manager of Horticulture Operations and Projects. The interviews were recorded last Spring, in April 2021, as vaccinations were first made widely available, the first time it seemed possible to imagine the worst of the coronavirus pandemic was behind us.

“I don't think it's hokey to think of the cemetery as a place where you can think about life. And I think that the whole point. It was conceived that way, to have these large living organisms be in a place in which the dead were buried, it's showing, like, not in a subtle way, the continuity of life.” -Joseph Charap, Director of Horticulture

Jainey Bavishi is the director of the New York City Mayor's Office of ​Climate Resiliency — overseeing more than $20 billion worth of investments to prepare New York City for the impacts of climate change. This includes bolstering the city’s coastline ​against coastal storms and high-tide flooding, preparing for intense rainstorms, and protecting New Yorkers against deadly heat waves.

We met with Jainey the spring of 2021, well before the current hurricane season provided a dramatic demonstration for why these efforts are so critical to the city’s future. She brought us to the newly rebuilt boardwalk of Edgemere, an oceanfront community on the Rockaway peninsula, not far from JFK airport, in Queens. The Rockaways were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and Edgemere, whose very name means “at the sea’s edge,” is among the communities still grappling with the hard choices, presented by changing weather and rising sea levels.

Jainey got her start working on equitable disaster recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina, and went on to lead climate preparedness efforts for the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan. In 2017, she joined the de Blasio Administration to lead a team of urban planners, architects, engineers, lawyers, and policy experts who to develop ​science-based programs and policies that address impacts of climate change.

From heatwaves to hurricanes, flooding to FEMA grants, our conversation ranged through the myriad ways our communities will need to think differently about how we build for an ever-changing future. Jainey’s insights humanized and made tangible the profound social justice and economic impacts of climate change, and the complexity in designing an equitable recovery plan. Jainey was recently nominated by President Biden to a top leadership position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and is awaiting Senate confirmation.

The pandemic has created a tremendous amount of isolation and distance between people. While digital tools and ways of gathering have helped us stay somewhat connected, they lack the capacity to help us relax, have fun, build trust and rapport and get to know each other in our more full selves.

Organizations are struggling to find ways to gather that feel safe and meet this moment which is leading us to a new normal. It can be important to gather, at least occasionally, in person and what better way to do that than safely outdoors in the container of nature and the wild.

We are social animals. We crave belonging - to each other, to family, to tribe, to team, to community. So when we have moments of connectivity, especially after being in isolation for so long, it rings a bell deep within us.

Join Wild Talk host Jay Erickson and some of his colleagues at Modus, a digital agency, as they paddle on the Hudson River to Bannerman Island and visit a castle with an explosive history. They are meeting in person for the first time since the pandemic, lock downs and working from home. We can hear the excitement to be together in person and to be setting sail on a new chapter and adventure together.

“We've been missing dimension. Everything's been very flat not just because the screen is flat and people are flat -we all just got there like very one dimensional. A lot of the beauty and the messiness and the connections that all happen that you don't realize they're happening. The ones you can feel but not see.” - Abi Stock

Transcript & photos: https://www.wildtalkpodcast.com/episodes/episode-09-rivers-castles-kayaks