Walking west side to east side on the last day of the year I saw an old friend, my favorite tree in Central Park. She overlooks the transverse two blocks inside the 97th Street Fifth Avenue park entrance.
I've been nuts about this beautiful tree since 1969 when I played football for the OLGC Rams on the dust bowl that ran from 97th to 99th St just west of Fifth Avenue. Its not a dust bowl anymore, it's a rolling green lawn, but the tree remains the same. Twisting up, around, out and in, branches curling insanely trying to top each other's strange path dipping through the sky like dolphins in love.
There are many candidates for best tree in Central Park, one is majestic on the east side of the Great Lawn and several others line Poet's Walk, but the 97th Street Lady stands alone, 160 years after a man dropped three seeds into the new park's freshly turned soil, it inhales bus and car fumes from the transverse every hour, every day, and tells the people driving, "I'll be here when your children's children are old." That makes me content.
"
It's a brand new day," Brand New Day ~ Al Kooper
Here are more pix of the tree and a few photos from the west side on the last day of 2012.
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| Douglass Houses |
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| Douglass Houses |
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| Douglass Houses |
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| Two guys on #1 subway line |
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| Hostel @ 891 Amsterdam Avenue |
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