Posts by Melissa Sostrin

Get Outside: Visit Radnor Lake State Park

Bald eagles nesting at Radnor Lake state park

When your child returns to school next fall, wouldn’t it be great if their “What I Did Over Summer Vacation” essay included “I helped maintain a bald eagle nesting area?” They can do that at Radnor Lake State Park which is a mere twe…

To be a Steward of the Earth, Live a Life of Radical Amazement

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai said, “If, while holding a sapling in your hand you are told that the Messiah is about to arrive, first plant the sapling and then go out to receive the Messiah.” Much is written in the Torah and the Talmud about trees, and we read even more carefully about the…

Searching for Sunlight

If ye, in search for sunlight, found but void, Go, fashion it from nought,

Hew it from crags and quarry from the rocks, In cells of the heart be it sought.

Hayim Nachman Bialik

I sought sunlight at Hidden Lake twice in late November - once with my niece Kyla, a college freshman, the sec…

Jewish Tradition Teaches Us to Get Outside

Scene from Deerwood Arboretum and Nature Center

“Grant me the ability to be alone; may it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grass - among all growing things and there may I be alone, and enter into prayer, to talk with the One to whom I belong.”

While these word…