New York: Ithaca

We spent a couple of lovely days in Ithaca, spending a lovely morning at the Cornell Ornithology Lab, staying up late watching movies and chatting with friends and hiking along gorges to waterfalls.

The lake by the Ornithology Lab is beautiful. I sat there a long time, just listening to all the birds and then sketched for a while. Ithaca in the summer is so green, a very different green from California, the sort of green that knows it is short-lived and happens with a mad energy every spring.

If you love birds and you love art, then you must visit Cornell just to see Jane Kim’s Wall of Birds Mural. We bought this lovely book of all the bird paintings and look at it often. Here are my kids in front of a very, very small part of the mural. And on the left, the trail around the lake.

From the top of I.M. Pei’s beautiful art museum, the vista I saw could have been straight out a Harry Potter movie. Sadly, it was closing time by the time I thought to sketch it, so this is as far as I got.

Lunch at the Moosewood Cafe. Simple and really lovely.

And the beautiful gorges around Ithaca, many (all?) of which end in waterfalls. This is a little bit downstream from the falls, where the river is shallow and gentle and kids and adults enjoy wading in it.

This last piece was a gift for our friends we stayed with. A sketch of their beautiful home, so cozily nestled in the forest.

I could’ve stayed a long, long time in this town. Sketching, wandering, visiting farmers’ markets. Maybe I’ll be back one day.