While Napa Valley was being inundated with rain last week, I was in New York City with my family, experiencing a different kind of inundation: the sights and sounds of Manhattan from Christmas to New Year's Day.
With only nine days to spend on our first visit to this most amazing city we had to choose carefully of what we could see and do, but as you might have guessed trees were on my list.
Manhattan is unique in the way it manages to combine a mind-boggling grand scale with an intimate and cozy human scale, and scattered through the forest of buildings there are parks and tree lined plazas and promenades.
At a distance, say from Liberty Island or the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan is a sight of mythic proportions. Some of its buildings are half as tall as Napa's Mt. George, yet the whole island would fit neatly in Napa Valley between Imola Avenue and Rutherford.
At the heart of the city, Central Park, measuring about 2.5 miles long by 1/2 mile wide, is home to more than 24,000 trees, while the entire city of Napa has about 30,000.
Riding the subways and walking around town, I constantly found myself in transition. One minute you're in a crowded underground train, the next minute on a broad avenue streaming with cars, buses and taxi cabs, and the next minute, on a quiet tree-lined street.
Thanks to a great little book, "New York City Trees" (City of New York Parks and Rec., 2002 Columbia Univ. Press), agreeable weather and a cheerful long-suffering wife, we were able to do a lovely tree walk in southern Central Park.
Starting west of the Great Lawn, about 81st Street, a map in the book guided us along tree-lined pathways, past a partially frozen lake, Strawberry Fields, the Tavern on the Green, the "Ball fields," the Wollman Ice Rink, the East Green, and Conservatory pond, ending by the Metropolitan Museum at 83rd Street on the Upper East Side. That's a lot of walking. The book said "Two and a half hours," which I'm sure is possible if one doesn't linger much along the way. But we could not help but stop, stare and try to take in all of it: The expansive spaces in the park, dozens of species of trees, many of them gnarled and graceful old specimens, the lake and ponds, the giant buildings glimpsed across the park through high branches of dormant trees, crowds of people gathered for ice-skating, and families bundled up in hats and long coats to enjoy the cold-but-sunny day.
For me one of the best sights on the walk was the elm grove. Located at "The Mall," on the eastern side of the park, about 68th Street, it is one of the country's largest groves of American elms; graceful old trees, most in good condition. Thanks to the diligent efforts of community groups and park arborists they have, so far, avoided otherwise inevitable devastation by Dutch Elm disease.
On just a few winter days we were able to take in so much, about half of Central Park, the Statue of Liberty with its attending grove of London planes and flowering cherries, the Esplanade at Battery Park with its neat rows of lindens, Lincoln Center with its "Bradford" pears in the plaza, and grand public Christmas trees scattered around town from Wall Street to Rockefeller Center.
Of course, here I'm leaving out so much of what we experienced: Our family together for the holidays, music, entertainment, art, great food and even a celebrity sighting (Al Pacino). And, as I learned from a vendor on the street, did you know you can buy a Rolex for only $35? What a city.
We've seen Manhattan in winter, with its buildings, windows, and dormant trees dressed up and lit for the holidays. We're hoping to see it again some time soon, in spring and again in fall, as the seasons bring changes to the city and its trees.
Bill Pramuk is a registered consulting arborist with Britton Tree Services Inc. Please send questions to bpramuk@pacbell.net
