Green stress...

Crowded day at Central ParkLast weekend, my friend and I decided to take an adventure up to Central Park, the annual trek up on the 6 train us downtowners take at the very first sign of spring. As we approached the park, I could feel the anticipation and anxiety growing, every block closer the sidewalks seemed to get a little more crowded, until the greenery emerged in our view and what we already knew became obvious—it was on. Our pace quickened as we entered the park around 68th street, and we danced and skirted through the crowds, half running through the family’s with strollers while frantically searching the hills for the perfect spot. Up and around, over and under, trial and error, we finally saw it emerge, that perfect tuff of grass at the highest spot on a hill, perfectly space so as not to be too close to anyone else, especially out of range of those kids throwing the Frisbee. Ironically, after we spread our blankets and nestled in, I opened Whitehead’s book Colossus of New York. In his short chapter on Central Park describes the chaos of our quest for a peaceful afternoon almost exactly. “Where to sit, where to sit. Our whole future depends on it” (38), he chants. Whitehead’s take on the unique experience of sitting in a park in New York rang very true to me. He lyrically describes the hunt for the best spot, the bombarding sights and sounds our brain must process as we seek the solace of the trees, and even the overly apparent scarcity of this green, with over half the parks green hills sectioned off with fences—no trespassing. We are so starved for peaceful greenery and nature in New York that even going to the park is a stressful and competitive experience. And a great deal of it we aren’t even allowed to make us of. This became even more evident to me after my trip to San Francisco this weekend, where we stumbled through the green lawns of public parks every ten minutes to get to the street on the other side. Yet there, there was no fenced off space or overly manicured areas, it was just simple lawns like our back yard, where people sat barbequing, playing games, singing and playing music, even dancing or simply sun bathing, with at least a twenty foot radius of open space around them if they wanted! For us New Yorkers, this is unheard of. Yet for some reason, I couldn’t wait to get home and find that perfect spot again in the park…