The Diary: Jane Owen

In the mossy surrounds of a woodland pool 1,000ft above the Hudson river in New York State a newt appears, his mottled feet almost transparent in the afternoon sun. The spirit of newt-fancier Gussie Fink-Nottle is present, along with Fink-Nottle's creator, PG Wodehouse, whom, I have just discovered, wrote a song called "Yale". Yale and, to a degree, newts are the reasons that I am in the States.

I am a Yale Poynter fellow attached to the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES). Newts are sensitive to pollution and it's reassuring to see them thriving. The Wodehouse angle is less reassuring. His uncharacteristically leaden Yale lyrics include the line, "Poe who wrote the Raven, might have made writing pay, And got some kale, if he had only had a course at Yale."

Kale?

. . .

To Kroon Hall, Yale's greenest building, and the wooden cathedral-like home to Yale F&ES. Dean Crane, aka Professor Sir Peter Crane FRS, former director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and now head of Yale F&ES, materialises in a sweatshirt and baseball cap, a low-key approach for the man who has been drawing disciplines and nationalities together to grapple with sustainability, climate chance and other itchy little global issues. He plays down his collegiate approach: "It's the obvious way to go to understand the environment because the subject brings everything together. I think that working together is also characteristic of Yale."

Students are helping themselves to iced tea, lassi and aubergine focaccia sandwiches before the screening of Pad Yatra, a 2012 film about a Himalayan environmental pilgrimage, shown as part of the student-run environmental film festival, EFFY. They are postgrads, many having come from careers in finance and other unlikely backgrounds.

. . .

One of my fellow fellows at Yale, His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, arrives from his monastery in the Himalayas via a tour of Ivy League and other US universities, to talk environmental responsibility. In deep red-and-gold robes the 29-year-old leader of 55 Himalayan monasteries is ignoring dishes of fine cheeses, fruit and intriguing biscuits in the panelled drawing room of the Master's House at Timothy Dwight College, in favour of greeting the people of many faiths and persuasions who've come to celebrate his arrival.

The Karmapa has been speaking at Woolsey Hall, where the 2,600 seats could have been filled twice over. My talks, on landscape, and urban parks, and at less showy venues, pull in about 50 a time, which may help explain why he has an entourage of 20 or so, plus security and a small motorcade, while my single accomplice declines to wear a security earpiece or talk into his sleeve.

. . .

I hold a public talk with Mark Bomford, the quietly intense head of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, which includes two urban farms here in New Haven. We discuss the problems of getting horticulture and food production taken as seriously in academia as, say, (Bomford suggests as an example) "an establishment-shaking reinterpretation of post-structuralist literary criticism". He adds: "I'm not saying this to downplay the importance of the academic work that garners status, funding, and media attention but, rather, that we desperately need . . . to reconsider our priorities, and to ensure the difficult issue involved in feeding people is afforded the attention it deserves."

I walk a few streets beyond Yale's monumental neo-Gothic blocks of intellectual endeavour into New Haven proper in search of a drugstore. On the far side of an unmanned Yale security booth, the housing turns from brownstone and clapboard to high-rise. A large man in his late twenties asks for money. In a jet-lagged muddle I say that I am English. He nods and departs.

The Yale/New Haven divide is startling, the Them and Us architecture difficult to ignore. Yale works hard with its city neighbours and F&ES tries to help by working with local communities to plant trees, grow food and transform rundown local parks into safe and alluring green spaces but it is an uphill task.

. . .

Train to New York City on an unseasonably cold day with Peter and Elinor Crane to meet Betsy Barlow Rogers. In the 1970s, when the city was on the edge of bankruptcy and Central Park was a no-go area, Barlow Rogers dreamt up the idea of restoring the park's 843 acres. We stroll past the results: Belvedere Castle, the lake and the Mall's four rows of magnificent American elms. I feel a pang of Albion envy.

To the Boathouse for lunch. It does not take reservations and the place is jammed with elegant diners but we are shown to the best table in the house for crab cakes, salad and tap water. Champagne arrives in Betsy's honour.

. . .

Earlier in the week I had gone to a debate involving the schools of law, divinity and environmental studies to discuss the forthcoming papal encyclical on the environment. Why, given all the problems caused by religion, turn to religion to help solve this earthly problem? Peter Crane's thought is that the environment needs to be seen in moral and ethical terms, given that scientists and politicians have failed to make much headway since Rio. His instinct looks good when the debate roars straight into hard-nosed discussion on contraception, population and tax control.

The Karmapa has given his followers a set of environmental rules by which to live and they include vegetarianism, which he says he finds particularly difficult. But, at a vegetarian dinner with him a couple of nights ago, I began to fully appreciate the glories of kale salad, the meal of the moment. Maybe Wodehouse, who usually gazes nostalgically backwards, was a century ahead of his time.

Jane Owen is editor of FT House & Home. Her trip to Yale took place before the Himalayan earthquake. The Yale Himalaya Initiative and Nepali students have provided support

Illustration by Toby Whitebread

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