The off-season may be the best times to explore the more than 25 miles of trails in Shelter Island's Mashomack Preserve.

In the Hudson Valley, the town of New Paltz and nearby places like Rosendale, High Falls, and Gardiner combine for a perfect weekend getaway. History, culture, and green spaces come together spectacularly here; this is home to some of the country's most beautiful rivers, mountain ranges, farmlands, and vistas.

In Reykjavik we have 24 hours of daylight in June and about four hours in January. It's one of the cleanest, greenest, and safest cities in the world — a "greening up" that's urgent as temperatures across the Arctic rise faster than anywhere else in the world.

In 1861 -- only 10 years after Yosemite Valley had been "discovered" -- Carleton E. Watkins, perhaps the most famous early Western photographer, wandered this extraordinary natural wonder with heavy camera equipment strapped to mules and snapped images that inspired Abraham Lincoln to secure the world's first national park, in perpetuity, "for public use, resort, and recreation."

Today, many of our national parks -- Yosemite and Grand Canyon especially -- are perilously overcrowded, a reminder of what happens when a public patch of land becomes #instafamous.

African elephants are in trouble. According to the Save the Elephant organization, their numbers have fallen from as many as 10 million a hundred years ago to as few as 400,000 today, and they could be nearly extinct by the end of the next decade.

Amagansett firefighters extricated a man from a silver Toyota sport utility vehicle that had been struck by a delivery truck in front of Cirillo’s I.G.A. on Montauk Highway Thursday afternoon. 

In the history of written correspondence, the usefulness of postcards, in my opinion, falls somewhere between “telegram” and “tweet.” The sender has room for maybe three or four sentences — not a whole lot of space. But with a postcard it’s the picture that says the most, taking its recipient on a quick little journey to another place, maybe far away, maybe not.

The Montauk Seafood Festival will return for its seventh year under a tent at Gurney’s Star Island Resort and Marina on Sept. 7 and 8 from noon to 5 p.m.

The 73rd annual Shinnecock Powwow, one of the largest powwows in the country, gets started tomorrow in Southampton and runs through Labor Day, featuring dancing and vendors. The grounds open at 3 p.m. tomorrow and at 10 a.m. Saturday through Monday. Dancers make their grand entry at 7 tomorrow night, and again at 12:30 and 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and at 12:30 p.m. on Monday.

Admission is $12 for adults, $10 for senior citizens, children 6 to 12 years old, and the disabled. Children 5 and under are free, as is parking. MasterCard and Visa are accepted. Pets are not allowed.