Exploring Creative Peaks: A Hike, a Mic, and a Conversation

here live with a little hiking mic. So I'm out walking, trying to bring you along for just a little, little stroll with me in a really beautiful place. And my favorite, favorite canine companion, Batdog. That's kind of weird, that's the first time I ever called her Batdog. Um, anyway, I hope you're having a great day today. So just wandering around. Nothing, no, no intention other than walking for a few minutes and showing you guys a little bit of where I am. Love this place. If you stick with me, there's going to be a really cool view coming up in a couple minutes or so. So I'm wandering around. This actually, actually used to be, uh, used years and years ago, I believe it was a monastery, or monks used to own this property. So it was like a— if it was a retreat center or monastery. Since then it's been taken over by a college, which is actually really cool, you know, to see. Great example of adaptive reuse architecture, right? Using spaces for a new purpose. This is a skywalk here. And it goes up to like an observation area. It's unfortunately closed on the weekend, so I can't get up there, but it's a really cool view if you get up there. And here's what I was talking about. Just stick here for a minute. Hope you're having a great day. Hey, Gigi's in the house! Gigi, great to see you. I hope all's well. Always good seeing you, my friend. Thanks for your inspo yesterday, I always appreciate it. So it's— yeah, it's very quiet here. There's actually no one around. I want to show you this really cool, uh, table. I love this table every time I come here. It's like a sculpture.

Check this table out.

How cool is that? It's like concrete and I guess steel. It's just such a cool sculptural piece. I'll sit here lots of times and just sketch, but I, I'm not sketching today. I'm just out for a walk with my pup. It's a little cool out today. I was going to go into NYC to Central Park It looked like it was supposed to rain today, and I don't think it ever did, but that's okay. I had things to do at home, and it just allowed me to get out here for this beautiful walk. So Check this out, guys. I love it here.

Here comes the view.

Check this out, it's so beautiful here. Hello, hello everybody in chat. Please, uh, if you like what you're seeing, hit that like button, subscribe to my channel. Water. So Gigi says there water. Oh yeah, there's a big lake right here. Show you from the other side. We're going to walk across it also. There's a waterfall in here. I often dream about becoming a billionaire and buying a place like this somewhere, or even buying this place. I love this. Check out the house. Believe it or not, I actually love overcast days like today because if you look at the sky, look at the light showing through, gives some dark patchy areas.

It's also great for videoing because there's not a lot of sun glare.

Thank you, GG, for promoting the likes. I appreciate that.

So this is a good change of pace, guys.

I was inside pretty much all morning today. I am actually working on creating some apps. I'll be posting a walk and talk I did earlier, but basically in my walk and talk I'm saying I'm a creator, right? Creative brain. My creative brain is going 24/7. There's so many ideas, sometimes it's kind of paralyzing, it kind of shuts me down. Um, so getting out for a walk in nature is a great way for me to change my state of mind.

And, um, the apps—

I'm developing apps that can help, help me eliminate some of the unnecessary brain project clutter. So I'll be talking about that a little at some other point, but stay tuned. He loves this place, my canine companion. I actually have a gimbal with me today, so hopefully my picture is steadier. Let me try to get over here on the dock. So yeah, so this— it was like a retreat center for monks or something. You can see remnants of kind of an old, uh, looks like a grill area, fire area. Let's go on this dock and get a nice view across.

Olivia does not swim, as far as I know.

He likes to jump in the water, so we should be good. Here, let's check this view out. GG, that's a great question. Um, That's a great, great question. The answer is not really. It's not really ever that busy, and I kind of don't want to say the location because I like that it's a quiet place. As always. But yeah, it's usually a pretty quiet place here, so fingers crossed. It stays that way. Um, I love social media, I love Instagram, TikTok, all that stuff, but double-edged sword. Yeah, it's taught me and showed me some really cool locations that I've been to. Another part of that sword is some places have become way too popular. Do you guys know what I mean? Put in the chat, do you, you know what I'm saying? Like You go to some places and they're just so overcrowded, and a lot of that is because of social media. And a lot of these people just— and that's it.

Um, yeah, that's just the place you're in, right?

Locations are, for me, much more than an Insta spot.

They're an experience.

So it is— there is actually no one, no one here but me right now in this entire park, as far as I know. Yeah, thank you, GG. I hope so too. Central Park is a different vibe, right? It's not always peaceful. There are some pockets of quiet you can find in the park. But in general, it's busy, and that's okay. It's just a different urban environment. But relatively speaking, it is, you know, it could be a sanctuary from other places in the city. So I love Central Park so, so much. Here's that— I don't know if this was like a barbecue area, maybe, at one point in time. It's falling apart, it's decrepit. We'll kind of head back this way and get a view walking back.

Where Liv?

Livia, come here, Liv.

Gotcha.

Livia loves it here. I could probably let her off leash, but you're not allowed to do that in parks, and I don't want to. I just want to be safe. I really don't think she'd run off. Here's another great viewpoint. I'm just gonna be quiet, let you guys look at this view.

There we go.

I want to get the camera. That should be good.

Alright, cool.

Pretty nice spot, right guys? I love this tree, by the way, right in front of us. I think it's a willow tree. Um, when this gets flowers on it, it's beautiful. But I just, I love— look at, just look at that tree. It is spectacular. Yeah, love that tree so much. It's a treat with the, uh, geese. We're going down to the living, the living level. Livy, what do you see? Baby, you're silly. She's so silly. Yeah, tranquility is a great word. Tranquility is a great word. Let's head back this way, pup. Everybody, the cool view. Should we go down the hill, guys? We're gonna go check out this really steep hill. I love going down here. Let's go down the hill. Ready? I'm going to show you something down at this hill that intrigues me, and I'll show you why it intrigues me. Spin move, sir. Let's go down to the bottom here.

There's something I want to show you.

Spin move. Keep getting tangled up. Liv, we're gonna go down to the bottom. Spin move again. Whoa. Wow, I hope not making you guys dizzy with the spin moves, but, uh, check this out. Here we go. Tada! I am not sure what this all is here. Um, I love the color. That's why I like coming down here. I love this rusty color of this junk. I could probably research and find out what it is. It doesn't, doesn't smell bad. Um, I just love the color of that rusty color. Let's go down here, we'll look at the waterfall from the bottom. Watch out, there is poison ivy around here. Example, here's some poison ivy right here. So that's poison ivy. Let me show you this kind of waterfall angle. Livia, come here!

Livia, Livia, stop!

Out of the way! I can't look over that wall, it's Too high.

Alright, up we go.

Whoa, this is steep. All right, we made it. I love this shot. I love the, um, those maple— the maple trees. I think they're Japanese maple trees. Just check out that beautiful red kind of color. I am being pulled. As a Cancerian, water is my element. Calms me down instantly. All right, GG, well, we just got you some ASMR. Feel free to go back. Keep watching the video over and over. We're gonna head back that way, so you'll get to see it one more time before we head out. I'm not gonna walk down that path here today. You see the geese? Let me see the geese. If you're watching now, hello, welcome to the live stream. Just a little hike and Mike today. No plan other than wandering, talking, and letting you just share in a little bit of nature. Feel free to hit that like button and subscribe if you like this type of material, or New York City, or architectural sketching. Yeah, become a subscriber. We have a great community out there, and one of them is on right now in the chat. Gigi is awesome. You can join Gigi and other awesome people in the chat as well. We'll get one last look at the water, we'll head up the hill. Look at the waterfall from this side. I'm gonna look at the waterfall from down on this side. My pup just pulled me. There we go. Olivia, stop. Sorry about the tech glitch. My pup pulled me and the camera went wonky. This is a good view of the fall from here. Hello, Karim, good to see you. Now my pup is silly. I'm going to be silent just for 30 seconds or so so you can enjoy this.

All right, hit up the path a little bit here.

Hope you enjoyed that look at the waterfall. We're gonna go up where Olivia's taking us, my faithful guide here. So yeah, guys, if you like that waterfall and the sound of that water, let's go back, rewatch that section over and over and over and over. Good ASMR. Just enjoy these trees here. I'm going to show them to you. All right, I think she's taking me down a path we don't go down too often, so let's go down it. So Stone wall here. Poison ivy.

It— there's a vine.

I love how— look how just twisted it is over here. It's pretty incredible. Pretty amazing, right? I love, I love seeing nature kind of take over, um, take over. I just see old relics and old trees destroyed in hurricanes, stuff like that. I just wanted— it's cool to see vines like that just wrapping themselves around trees.

Good walls.

Yes, Mother Nature doing her thing. Exactly, exactly. Of course, there's always a time and place where we need to, uh, keep Mother Nature in check a little bit. I'm not sure, I think there's a little bridge down here.

I haven't been down this way in a long time.

If you guys are like that, subscribe, hit that thumbs up. Come back for more. Uh, sometimes I'm in the woods, sometimes in New York City, and lots of times I'm live streaming at my desk studio sketching stuff. Or maybe it'd be studio desk. I think I have those words in the wrong order. Desk studio, studio desk. Put in the chat which way is correct. Sounds kind of weird, but just check these out. I just love, I love rock formations. Edie's in the house! Hey Edie, good to see you. Hope you're well. Yes, Edie, fewer trees by far, but the trees are beautiful in New York City. And I would, would have been in Central Park today. I will get there real soon. Let's go back this way. Good girl. We'll head back up the path. All right, we're gonna head back up the path towards that water area. We're gonna wrap once we get back up there. Hope you guys are enjoying this walk with me today. I'm enjoying you guys watching. Check this out, actually, one of the things I look for, I love looking for, is light and shadow. Look at the way the light is kind of shining through that maple tree. I'm fighting Olivia because she won't go away. Here we go. That's a cool screenshot. If someone wants to take a screenshot, go for it. But just look at the light shining through the leaves of that maple tree, right? So I look at light— let me get closer— look at light, I look at texture like on this tree. Light texture. If he wants to go over here, she's insisting. So Olivia and I have like a— I like to think it's a 50/50 rule. She gets to go her way 50%, I get to go in my way 50%, but it's more like a 85 15% rule, 85% in Libby's favor because she is a stubborn pup, but I love that about her because she likes being outside and walking. We share that in common. All right, so I like looking at light, texture, obviously shapes of things, um I gotta do a spin move. Olivia's wrapped around me. I gotta switch hands. God bless those, those streamers that go live for hours. Uh, my hand is like— my left hand's numb from holding the camera, so I had to move it. GG, thanks for tuning in. Good seeing you. Have a great, great day.

Appreciate it.

All right, we're going to head to the top of those maple trees and we'll wrap up there. See you later.

In a while. Crocodile.

Rooster.

Rooster. Just made that one up.

Going back up the hill. You can probably hear the waterfall. I'll be quiet. All right, let's get down by that branch and wrap up. I hope the gimbal's been helping a little bit with the steadiness. I see it wobbling a little bit, but sorry, it's probably not perfect. This— thinking about investing in a different gimbal and selling this one. All right, here's the bridge waterfall. We're going to wrap here. Let's do a little selfie. Moment. Hey guys, thank you so much for watching this Hiking Mike. I hope you had a good time, found something peaceful, relaxing, inspiring about it. Um, if you like this, please subscribe to this channel, give a thumbs up. More videos like this from here, New York City, and lots of videos of me sketching architecture because that is my passion. Right guys, until we meet again, sketch boldly, think creatively, and embrace imperfection. See you soon.