Woodstock

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park — I went in thinking this was John D. Rockefeller Sr.'s story. It's not. It's about three families and one idea: land conservation.

The thread runs back to George Perkins Marsh, born on this land — one of America's first environmental thinkers, who watched Mediterranean deforestation firsthand as U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire and wrote Man and Nature (1864). Frederick Billings, an actual railroad man, bought the estate in 1869 precisely because it was Marsh's childhood home, and began reforesting the hills. His granddaughter married Laurance Rockefeller, who came across as much softer and kinder than the Rockefeller name suggests — he fell in love with nature after moving here for his wife and spent decades restoring what earlier generations had degraded.

Best part of the visit: an unplanned conversation with a volunteer, Sue, about urban design in NYC, Boston, and LA. It led me to Singapore's decades-long planning — Lee Kuan Yew's vision and Liu Thai Ker's execution — and its self-sufficient neighborhood "hubs."