Travel

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

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.

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.

The cargo ship La Evangelista embarks weekly from Puerto Montt, charting a 1,400-mile course through the fjords and coastal channels of southern Chile, past archipelagos of uninhabited islands to Puerto Natales, a town tucked in the foothills of the famed Torres del Paine National Park.

My day trip to Hudson Yards was meant to be a sojourn filled with schadenfreude. After having read numerous derogatory reviews of the commercial, residential, and cultural complex that opened on the far west side of Manhattan in March, I was eager to see the debacle up close.

Head northwest from Santiago for 73 miles -- practically cross-country in the world's narrowest nation -- and arrive in this port city, best described by its famous former resident, the Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda: "Valparaíso, how absurd you are . . . you haven't combed your hair/ you've never had time to get dressed/ life has always surprised you." Yet, it is Valpo, as locals call it, that does much of the surprising.

If you’ve ever flown in or out of Kennedy Airport, you’ve probably seen the Trans World Airlines Terminal, or the TWA Flight Center as it was called. Built in 1962, the shapely building was designed by the legendary architect Eero Saarinen to usher in the Jet Age, but has been unused since 2001, when the airline went bankrupt.

A softness in people’s eyes and a gentleness of gesture. This was my travel brief, along with a bit of adventure. I didn’t mind the details, but I was craving warmth of spirit above all else, something in direct contrast to the clamor of my orbit in Manhattan.

Sure, people normally traipse off to tropical paradises in the dead of winter, when the dry, hot days and brilliant beaches are most appreciated. But in Central America, nature and the travel industry offer some compelling reasons to visit the area in the off-season. Between May and November, travelers are likely to encounter an absence of crowds, a significant drop in prices, and unique experiences in its flora and fauna — hence, “the green season.”

Washington has been home since 1982, but Amagansett has been my summer escape since 1968, when my parents bought a small house on the bay side of the Napeague stretch. I’m still there every summer with my husband and son, reveling in that magical smell of the saltwater air. But I also love living in D.C., where I own a landscape-design company. It’s such a nice, clean, green city, and easy to get around. Here are my top picks for experiencing the nation’s capital like a local.

You can do something in Bhutan generally inadvisable elsewhere in Asia: inhale deeply.

This tiny Himalayan kingdom, squeezed between notoriously smoggy India and China, is said to be the only country in the world that is carbon negative, meaning that its forests are able to absorb more carbon dioxide than is emitted. Forests cover over 60 percent of this land and are sacred, as are mountains, rivers, and the earth. The population is small (about 800,000), but the power of nature is enormous. Humans know their place.

People joke that it’s ‘the new Sag Harbor,’ but the North Fork’s premier destination is still a world away from the Hamptons hustle.