It’s actually been just about one month that I’ve been out here on Long Island and additional two since starting work. I’m here at The Nature Conservancy’s chapter in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, a town that lives up to the idyllic setting conjured up in my mind by its name. Even doing my research beforehand, I was still surprised by how quiet and serene it is out here just up the hill from the shore along the Long Island Sound. The office I work at is actually a repurposed barn on a parcel of land also used as a research farm, and is therefore among the more classically-Midwestern-feeling places I’ve had the pleasure to spend any amount of time despite it being about an hour train ride from New York City.