When I was growing up in Buffalo, Delaware Park was the extent of my outdoors. Oh, there was "college camp" for a few days each year when I attended Campus School. I distinctly recall a stalwart teacher saying to an apparently squeamish me: "A speck of dirt never hurt anybody."

I discovered the "real" outdoors decades later, while living in Colorado. I started cross-country skiing, back country hiking (definitely not car camping), and came to cherish the outdoors. An immense network of hiking trails started across the street from my home, and Rocky Mountain National Park was just one of dozens of wilderness areas within less than an hour's drive.

I thought of back east as urban and out west as rural and wild. Truth be told, I became a bit snobbish about it. Wilderness is good; cities are bad. This macho girl skiied over the Continental Divide when she was four months pregnant. My children were on skis as soon as they could walk. We did week-long, back country, backpacking expeditions as soon as they could carry their own backpacks.

I thought that coming home to Buffalo ten years ago meant giving up my outdoor life. It was exciting to be back in the heart of a city, dense with neighbors and noise, and I decided that being on the shores of the vast Lake Erie would be an acceptable trade-off for my towering Rocky Mountains. I started sailing to get out on the water. Still, I wondered how I often I would be able to get back out west to revel in wilderness, to truly be in the all outdoors, not another soul in sight.

I was amazed to discover the Adirondacks a few years ago. Who knew that "the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous U.S." is just a beautiful several hour drive from Buffalo. Kayaking on Cranberry Lake, forays on remote, uninhabited islands, and challenging climbs in the high peaks, opened my eyes. There is wilderness back east. Right on my doorstep!

It's not quite the same, of course. There are more  than 100 towns and villages in the Adirondack Region, but it is this very mix of public and private land that allows for conservation and civilization to thrive side-by-side.

This is precisely the magic that I have found in outdoors back east versus backcountry out west. Zoar Valley epitomizes this. Tucked into a lovely complex of villages just an hour from downtown Buffalo, the sheer cliffs and grand vistas do not disappoint.

I have come to see Buffalo's beautiful Olmsted Park system as a very different example of this same combination of conservation and civilization. 

The Buffalo Cherry Blossom Festival in the Japanese Garden behind the Buffalo History Museum Right in the heart of these parks perfectly symbolizes this balance, this zen equilibrium. 

The Japanese Garden is a gift from Buffalo's first Sister City, Kanazawa, Japan. In fact, this 1962 relationship made Buffalo the first Sister City in the nation. The Garden was designed in 1970, construction started in 1971 and was completed in 1974. The year I left Buffalo and moved to a different hemisphere.

By 1983 renovations were needed, but efforts failed until the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy partnered with the Friends of the Japanese Garden in 2008. The result of this collaboration is an oasis in the heart of Delaware Park. Modeled on a famous garden in Kanazawa, it features more than 80 flowering cherry trees and lots of hostas; 20 globe lights; and three small islands connected by bridges to six acres of land along the shore of Mirror Lake.

The rise and fall of the Japanese Garden mirrors Buffalo's own tumultuous trajectory, and the Buffalo Cherry Blossom Festival beautifully symbolizes Buffalo's resurgence, practically defining the marriage of conservation and civilization.

Buffalo's Cherry Blossom Festival will kick off at Noon on Saturday, April 30 with an Opening Ceremony and a formal Tea Ceremony on the Portico. Sunday is Family Day. Look for origami, a puppet show, a hulahoopathon, a drum circle, and pink boat rides on Mirror Lake. The Festival continues all week, capped off on Saturday, May 7 with Music Day--a Cherry Jam Session, a pink parade, pink boat rides, food trucks, vendors, and more.

Quite appropriately, Saturday, May 7 is also I Love My Park Day in New York State. This fifth annual celebration of more than 100 New York parks and historic sites will expand this year to include public lands in the Adirondacks and Catskills.

From cherry blossoms in Delaware Park to out west wilderness and back. On the heels of Earth Day and as PBS airs the remarkable National Parks: America's Best Idea series all this week, I am realizing that outdoors in the city is just as valuable as backcountry out west. Olmsted parks, state parks, national parks...they're all outdoors, and they are all very important to our health and well-being as a community.

See you at the park!