THE OASIS

A Garden for All as Private Eden: Central Park, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, is our great urban oasis. (HERBERT MUSCHAMP, 5/23/03, NY Times)

CENTRAL PARK looks greener this spring than it has in recent memory. Is this my imagination or the result of scientifically verifiable causes, like rain? I prefer to think that nature is making a bigger effort than usual this year to celebrate a very special occasion: the 150th anniversary of Central Park's birth.

Where else on earth has nature's floral bounty been appreciated by so many? Where else, this side of Eden, have animal, vegetable and mineral variety been more densely combined to such voluptuous effect?

Nowhere that I know of. This is worth a rousing cheer. Though perhaps a contemplative moment is more in keeping with the spirit of our great urban oasis. How about a round of applause for contemplative moments, then? Let's meditate until we're blue in the face, our lungs give out and our hands are raw from clapping. We've got all eternity to hold our peace.

I suspect that when good New Yorkers die, they go to Central Park. We, the living, go there to rehearse. Or perhaps to become more worthy of life in paradise. Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the park along with Calvert Vaux in 1857, would not have quarreled with this hopeful interpretation.

Several years ago, Witold Rybczynski wrote a terrific book about the park and its remarkable creator, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century (1999).

MORE:
-Central Park's Golden Age: The 843 acres that make up the nation's best-known municipal park showcase nature at its finest. (NY Times, 6/01/03) Posted by Orrin Judd at June 1, 2003 10:37 AM