I USED TO HATE NEW YORK CITY. Specifically Midtown Manhattan, with its concrete canyons filled with too many cars and too few trees. Every time I left Penn Station and walked south on Eighth Avenue to The Nature Conservancy's offices, I was overwhelmed by the flood of humanity, the car horns blaring and the neon signs flashing. With its noise and stress and chaos, the city was a place I dreaded.My attitude wasn't all that surprising. I was trained as a plant ecologist—a tree hugger, literally. I focused on finding rare plants and keeping them alive at all costs. For me, cities seemed like black holes—gobbling up the plants I care about and destroying the land and water they need to survive.
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