Prospect: A Year in the Park

Night shift

On yet another dark day (what happened yesterday, the sun got scared of overexposure?), we present another talented photographer for whom Prospect Park is both subject and muse: Brian Christopher Sargent of Five Borough Films.









His strangely lit shots of the park at night capture the curious, other-worldly feeling of experiencing a public place at a time when no one else is ever there. Check out his gorgeous slide show of these haunting images here, and have a great weekend in our soggy park.

Sunday in the park with Dad

If it ever...ever...ever stops raining, grab your Dad and take him to the park! This wonderful shot (late 40s? Very early 50s?) looks like the Prospect Park Zoo, and hails from the Brooklyn Public Library's nifty Brooklyn collection archives. The skeptical miens of tots and adults suggest a staged shot (with mothers perhaps corralled nearby, eager to twitch collars and pull up socks for the camera). Ah, those were the days, before men dressed like teenagers and wore their babies in pouches!

Happy Father's Day to all AYITP-visiting dads!

Swanlets!

Mama Swan was paddling around Duck Island with a brood of fuzzy grey cygnets today, while Dad Swan acted as her "wing man" against the aggressive pack of Canada geese moseying around nearby.

 

Dad Swan sailed right up to me, hissed, and tried to bite me, just for having had the nerve to take pictures of the kids. Like you'd think I was some weirdo planning to post the shots on the Web or something.

All together now: Awwww.

Pilgrim rose

After a night of pounding rain, the roses growing wild near the Long Meadow released their perfume onto the wet air.

It also smelled a bit like wet dog, especially near Dog Beach, where a clueless young woman stood by as her doofy, dripping mutt leaped all over me. No "down, boy" or even an apology as I wiped the mud off; such dolts as these give ammunition to the anti-off-leash crusaders. Not the dog's fault, of course; he just suffered from an excess of unchecked happy dogness. I was reminded of the cretinously entitled parents who unleash their toddlers to hurl Cheerios around white-tablecloth restaurants and then imply that you "hate children" if you complain...

Anyway, the roses soothed my peevishness, especially since I missed Rose Night at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden last night. Here is a bonus rose from yesterday (with Pollinating Action Figure Bonus!) on the garden path behind the Audubon Center.

And here is Emily:

Nobody knows this little Rose –
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Bee will miss it –
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey –
On its breast to lie –
Only a Bird will wonder –
Only a Breeze will sigh –
Ah Little Rose — how easy
For such as thee to die!

                —Emily Dickinson

Green mansions

June breaks my heart with its ineffable lush mystery. As I set out for my first park walk this June, the sun shone, but the sky darkened as I ventured into the meadows and woods along the East Drive. 

 

In this bridal month, everything is a symphony of green and lacy white. But as the sun disappeared, I became more aware of the intense quiet, broken only by torrents of birdsong. (Are there more robins this year than ever?) The "Rose Garden," bereft of roses, was empty of people (and its pools still empty of water). But it did hold these honey-scented flowers on a tall shrub (anyone care to identify?)

By the time I reached the Vale of Cashmere nestled in its sunken grove, I had picked up a fat walking stick from the undergrowth for show. The pool there is already turning to muck and the lovely jets of water weren't on...not a good sign. Why are these lovely spaces, in a green-starved city, allowed to languish? Perhaps because they are too well hidden; we all claim to want seclusion, but as city dwellers, we are wont to speak softly in such places while carrying a big stick.

The air of verdant menace extended to this overgrown path near Battle Pass. It's identified on a sign nearby as "Tunnel Arch Bridge," but I just call it "M. Night Shyamalan Underpass."

I emerged from my solitary explorations onto the drive just as a rain shower began. Perhaps it's a legacy of growing up in this city in the Seventies and Eighties that I felt I had pushed my luck, gotten away with something.