Go get green. It’s a simple act. Just go to a park or a beach. Sit in a garden or a backyard. Find a field or a body of water. A river or the sea. Hike on a trail or climb to a mountain top. Spend time in whatever green space you have near and available to you. Gentry Bronson in New Orleans City Park

If you’re surrounded by the urban world, there are still spaces where green grows. Take it in. Oxygenate. Find what you need to connect to nature and remind yourself to slow down.

I’ve dwelled in a lot of cities, but I would not have survived without paddling out and catching waves at Ocean Beach, Rockaway, or Salmon Creek. Swimming in Key West or Fort Walton Beach. Bicycling through New Orleans’ City Park or San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

I live near the NOLA Lakefront, and I love to sit there on the top of the levee or right by the lapping waves. But there was a time when I found mountain bike paths above Capital Hill in Seattle or riverside parks in Minnesota.

There have been many hours spent in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark or escaping to the Berliner Funkturm in Berlin while on tour.

I’ve sought out cemeteries in Prague and the Crescent City where it’s quiet and green just to experience life by sitting where we honor death. I’ve swum to sea caves outside Fetiya in Turkey and wandered out into the sea at sunrise in Da Nang, Vietnam.

And I’ve gone to rooftops just to breathe the air high above the city.

Hurricane Ida did damage to a lot of the beautiful parks in New Orleans, but nature, like human beings, is very resilient. I look forward to returning to those ancient oaks.

But right now, as a hurricane refugee, I’ve found my green time on the white sand beaches of Florida’s Panhandle and in the ocean that rolls onto those beaches. It’s been my salvation among all the chaos of the last three weeks. I’m so very grateful for that.

Go. Get green.