Episode summary:
I travelled to New York City in autumn to tune in to the wholesome leaf rustle in my favourite Manhattan park. Seward Park is a place I have loved for years, a true escape from the concrete and the traffic. I can sit in this park for hours watching the birds and listening to the sounds of nature. If you’re wondering ‘where is the best place to see autumn (Fall) foliage in New York City’, or ‘where can I spot birds in Manhattan’, Seward Park is certainly a good option.
Listen to a podcast about the natural beauty of a Manhattan park in autumn (Fall).
Transcript – S1 E6: Autumn in a peaceful Manhattan park
This week we’re strolling through Lower Manhattan on the first day of autumn and heading for a very special park.
So I’m in New York City and it’s the last week of September. I’m standing on a corner in Lower Manhattan where Canal Street crosses Essex Street or, if you prefer, Essex Street crosses Canal Street.
It’s the first cool day after a stifling summer. The pressure has retreated. The humidity is down and New York has turned on its big unseen air conditioner. Crisp, cool air is blowing through its steel canyons once more. The sky is blue again, a deep blue, not the hazy, washed out variety that prevails through summer. Fall is just beginning, with the promise of walking through red and gold carpets of maple leaves and cosying into cafes for cocoa.
There’s a spring in everyone’s step and just the occasional whiff of mothballs as winter scarves and coats get their first airing since being put away in April. Baseball is yesterday’s game. Football and hockey are all the chatter. Who’s drafted to which team? Who’s going to set records this season?
Years ago, when I came to New York often as a foreign correspondent, usually en route to somewhere far less glamorous in one of the ‘Flyover States’, I’d walk for hours around Lower Manhattan, scrolling anecdotes in my reporter’s notebook and taking black and white shots on my old Pentax P30 film camera.
Pocket of natural wonder
This corner was and is one of my favourite spots because of the presence of the delightful and remarkable Seward Park. When this welcome green space opened in 1903, it was home to the first permanent municipally built playground in the United States. There’s still a playground here today and an area known as a spray shower, which includes water fountains that help keep thousands of hot kids, dogs and adults cool during Manhattan summers.
I find a spot on a bench and gaze up through the branches of a mighty London Plane, its leaves just beginning to turn from rich summer emerald to autumn flame yellow. I love this species because the maple-like leaves at the end of the twigs seem to wave at you in the breeze. It’s very tempting to wave back. There are Siberian elms in this park too, as well as cherries, oaks and at least one ginkgo. Apparently there are also dogwoods, but I’ve yet to find them. In the heart of the concrete and brick urban jungle that is Gotham City, Seward Park is a pocket of natural wonder where the dominant sound is not the squeal of brakes or the honking of horns, but the meditative rustle of a million leaves.
There’s a light breeze today, just enough to ensure that leaf rustle is constant. I close my eyes and I could be among the quaking aspens in a remote part of Cedar Breaks National Park in Utah, or a seldom-visited river valley in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains. Accompanying the floral symphony is a yellow-bellied sapsucker. It’s a woodpecker, basically, but when it’s not woodpeckering away at tree bark, it has a cry that I think sounds just a little like a child’s squeaky toy. I try to locate it, but it’s too high in the canopy and well hidden. Instead, I spot some playful sparrows and, I think, a nut-hatch or two. I wonder what the park birds’ plans are now the season is changing. Are they preparing to head south to warmer climes to avoid an unforgiving New York winter? Or will they stay and brave the cold by snuggling up right here in Seward Park?
A brave dog indeed
I leave my bench and stroll to a paved area where a dozen elderly Chinese women are practicing Tai Chi. They look so cool, crouching and moving their hands and arms in perfect synchronicity. I’m really tempted to ask for a lesson, but I feel I’ll wreck their street cred. I watch them for a few minutes, making a mental note to take up Tai Chi at the earliest opportunity, and walk on to an even quieter and more private pocket of the park where there’s a life-sized bronze sculpture of a famous husky named Togo. Togo was the lead sled dog in a heroic 300-mile dash through blizzards and perishing temperatures in Alaska to deliver a serum to a town blighted by a diphtheria epidemic back in 1925. Togo and his fellow huskies saved many lives that day, so he deserves a pat on the head if you’re passing through.
The Alaska link is important because this park is named for William Henry Seward, the New York statesman and Secretary of State famous for orchestrating the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. What a buy that was! But I’m not focusing on history today. Instead, I’m drinking in the natural wonder of this special city oasis. I’m admiring the small meadow that the park’s gardeners leave to grow wild through summer, boosting the diversity by attracting insects and birds. And I’m celebrating the fact that for more than a hundred years, this small corner of lower Manhattan has provided peace, refuge and tranquillity for humans and animals. As more and more natural habitat is lost, how lovely it is to know that this place exists, a sanctuary where we can slow down, breathe and commune with yellow-bellied sapsuckers.
© copyright Matthew Brace
