In this encore episode (193) of Walk in the Park from 2018, we join a Tompkins County Environmental Management Council public field trip to one the county’s special “Unique Natural Areas” and Nature Conservancy Preserve, the O.D. von Engeln Preserve in Malloryville. Naturalist and preserve steward Bob Beck takes us on a tour of the ecological richness created by an Ice Age legacy, visiting swamps, fens, bogs and the remarkable biodiversity created by glacial eskers and kettle ponds in this 309 acre nature preserve along Fall Creek between Freeville and McLean, NY. Find out more about the preserve at nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/central-od-von-engeln-preserve-at-malloryville/

Each spring, the Finger Lakes State Parks Scaling Teams rappel down cliffs over Gorge Trails, manually removing shards of shale that winter freezing has left perched on ledges. If they didn’t do this hard, dangerous work, called “scaling,” it would not be safe enough for us to walk in the gorges, for fear of falling rock. Scaling must be conducted annually in six state parks in the Finger Lakes region. In this encore episode (167) of Walk in the Park from 2017, we take a close look at the scalers at work on the high cliffs in the upper gorge of Enfield Glen in Robert H. Treman State Park near Ithaca, NY. The scalers tell us and show us what’s involved.

Join us on a journey for more than four hundred years of history at Taughannock Falls State Park in Trumansburg, NY, ten miles north of Ithaca, in the Finger Lakes region. One of the highest waterfalls in the eastern United States, Taughannock is taller than Niagara and has been an attraction since before the Civil War.

In this encore episode (69) of Walk in the Park from 2014, narrator Tony Ingraham will take you from Cayuga and Iroquois Indian towns at Taughannock Falls, on the west shore of Cayuga Lake, to war with Lenape or Delaware Indians, to the Revolutionary War and the Sullivan Campaign invasion, to early settlers, steamboats, a railroad, tourist hotels, and finally to the creation of Taughannock Falls State Park. The park has its own history, with Civilian Conservation Corps work, floods, park planning, construction, and expansion, summer concerts, and interpretive exhibits. Join us on this journey through time at a singularly scenic location in New York’s beautiful Finger Lakes region.
Episode 69 of Walk in the Park, a public access TV series in Ithaca, NY produced by Owl Gorge Productions, Owlgorge.com.

One layer of sedimentary rock that slices through the eastern Finger Lakes forms the top of many waterfalls where Ice Age glaciers dug troughs that now hold the lakes. We’ll look at five of these falls in five different parks, in episode 215 of Walk in the Park, produced in 2019.
Walk in the Park is a public access cable TV series produced in Ithaca, NY by Owl Gorge Productions, Owlgorge.com.

February 2015 was the coldest month on record in the Ithaca area, in New York’s beautiful Finger Lakes region. And that winter was the first time Cayuga Lake came close to freezing over end-to-end since 1979. And from many perspectives on this lake that stretches beyond anyone’s horizon, at least while they are standing on the ground, Cayuga Lake did appear to be totally covered by a layer of ice, however thick or thin. In this 100th episode of Walk in the Park, let’s take a look at the evidence of Cayuga Lake’s freeze, from land and sky, and even from space!
Walk in the Park episode 100. See our Walk in the Park channel at walkinthepark.tv