Central Park

Although I have no qualms about doing things by myself much of the time, the idea of going someplace like Manhattan without some family or friends to share the ongoing experience with simply does not sound like a very attractive idea. No, when travelling like this, some good company is always preferable. And my wife and daughter, who accompanied me on the trip, certainly reaffirmed that notion this past April in New York City. Having said that, though, it is a simple fact of life that, when with others, even loved ones, things have to be negotiated and compromises and even sacrifices made. Especially when there is a scarcity of time and/or money to deal with.

So at the beginning of our trip, the three of us laid out our priorities for the NYC stay so that none of us would feel deprived at its end. But since Manhattan is so chock-full of interesting stuff, this naturally entailed cutting out most of the things we could do or see. And lamentably, it ended up making our experience in Central Park much too short (for my tastes).

Were I to live in Manhattan (yeah, sure, like that’s ever going to happen), I think I would be spending a great chunk of my time in Central Park. It is full of hilly pathways conducive to running, walking, and bicycling. And it’s important as well to have some actual trees, bushes, and grass around to remind me that I am still living on planet Earth and not on some artificial satellite somewhere deep in the galaxy! Our actual walk through Central Park, which occurred after our much-too-rushed tour through the Metropolitan Museum of Art on our last full day in Manhattan, was much too short.

We had left the Museum and had a few minutes to get a bite to eat at a roadside stand and walk into the park a little. So my experience in Central Park was by necessity pretty limited. But even though all we did was walk down some pathways into the park and back, this nonetheless was enough to make me appreciate it.

After we got back off the plane in Gainesville and were riding back into town, the entire surroundings seemed like Central Park in that plant life dominates my home town (especially in the Spring-Summer-Fall “mega-season”). I did like that concentration of tall buildings and the streets and all in most of Manhattan, but I could tell that with any extended stay, that type of environment would start to wear on me. So I instantly understood the significance of this important piece of real estate. Hopefully, the wiser heads running the show in New York City will continue to support their extremely important and valuable city park system in the face of the enormous premium on land values in the area and the concomitant pressures from other parties to build on park land. If anything, they need to add more parks.