I have always avoided Harriman State Park. And that’s largely because of its proximity to New York City. Where was the fun hiking in Nature only to run into the same people I worked with in the city? And constantly hear airplanes overhead and the noise of interstate traffic? City folks can have Harriman, I told myself, while I explored the Catskills, the Shawangunks, the Poconos, and points north and west away from the city and closer to the real thing. I saw myself as one who resisted the city mindset and therefore more deserving of Mother Nature’s affection.

Yet the few times I’ve been to Harriman State Park, I’ve always been impressed—not by modern conveniences like parking, toilets, groomed trails (most were not), kiosk maps, etc., but by the sheer, raw beauty of Nature there. The trees just seem prettier. Sunlight comes down through the gaps in the trees then bounces around to cast a soft glow in the deep forest. Two-and-a-half times the size of Manhattan and over 90% forested, it was peaceful, too, with only the sound of water in the nearby streams and birds chirping loudly overhead. Buffered by thick foliage, the noises of the city do not make it here. And all this, I thought, for Wall Street suits who cared more about money and transactions than the solemnity and sobriety of taking a walk in Nature.

It is said that Mother Nature has no karma. She nourishes and nurtures and devastates and destroys in equal measures. She neither awaits rewards nor suffers consequences for she does neither deeds nor misdeeds, only actions. And none of those actions—whether bringing flowers to bloom or shifting tectonic plates to raise mountains—come back to haunt her or ripple into her future. Mother Nature does what she does whenever she wants. There is no such thing as cause and effect as far as she is concerned.

And, likewise, I suppose, whether closer to the dealer of stocks or to the lover of trees, Mother Nature could not care any less as to where and when she whips up her artistry and stuns the world with her infinite beauty.