Famous Ankles

Whatever else it may be, Central Park is diverse and varied and just all over the place in terms of what’s there and what you can see at any one time.  When it was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux , they seem to take to the idea of it being impossible to see in one fell swoop.  There are areas that you can see a lot of the Park, but no place that you can see the whole.  About the best you can do is go to Belvedere Castle and get an elevated view.

There are a number of ways to get there, but the primary means I’ve always done is by wandering through The Ramble and it kind of ends up there.  But, for me, the Ramble is something I do when I really want to do some twisty, curvey, wooded walking.  It’s really nice and I usually view Belvedere as my “reward” for having done the walk.  Once you get there, you can go up and take in that semi-aerial view.

The body of water is called Turtle Lake and this time it was pretty well covered with some sort of pond scum.  I think it’s “duckweed”, but that’s a guess on my part.  Few ducks, but quite a few turtles.  The area in the distance is one of the many lawn areas that dot the Park.  Some are much grander (the Great Lawn and Sheep’s Meadow are two famous and wonderful ones).

The inside of Belvedere is a Park exhibit on the ecology of the area.  Mostly, though, what people do is go up this tiny circular stone stairway to the top to get the best view.  I don’t think I’ve ever done it without running into someone coming the other way and one of us has to back out ’cause it’s too small for two.

One of my more odd pleasures in doing the Ramble walk is seeing what’s right next to Belvedere Castle.  It takes a few pictures to capture it all, but I’m used to putting up too many pictures.

It’s the official Central Park weather station.  I always get a kick out of it thinking it’s the source of all the “current weather” reports on NYC.  There are no signs and I’ve never seen anyone in there, but it’s definitely a weather station…or an alien communications station…nah, it’s a weather station.  It’s completely enclosed in a secure fenced-in area but I have my secrets for getting fence-free pictures.

-H

I haven’t been to Central Park for a month or more and got the itch to go back.  This time I actually had a plan.  It hurts to admit that.  I’ve wanted to go back to Cleopatra’s Needle and take some photos with my new camera and it meant I needed to make sure I went in the right entrance.  Here’s a tip:  it’s just south of the Metropolitan Museum.  Enter around 81st Street and walk straight.  You’ll see some bears (with the occasional child hanging on)…

Continue straight on by and ignore the first right turn.  Take the second right turn.  Life is good, you’re close.

Cleopatra’s Needle is somewhere around 3,600 years old.  And it looks pretty good for that kind of age.  Unfortunately, New York City is aging it faster.  Or, rather, the pollution and the rain and the temperature changes and the….are all ganging up on it.  Nevertheless, it’s a magnificent point of interest.

Here’s a view from just north of it.

Ain’t it photogenic?

A little closer it starts to really show both the good and the bad.  As you can see, one side’s in pretty good shape and the other is very weathered.

With a slightly different view, the weathering is very evident.

Okay, that’s enough of the negatives.  I love this obelisk.  It is very historic and the history of it being constructed thousands of years ago, being moved to Alexandria a thousand or more years later, and then to New York another couple of thousand years after that is just mind boggling.  I love to sit and stare at it and think about the original makers and how they couldn’t have begun to conceive their handiwork’s fate.

And, no matter how crowded Central Park is, there are few people here.  When I showed up on Sunday, there were about 10 people milling around, more than I’ve ever seen there.  But within two minutes they had wandered off, leaving just three of us.  A few minutes later a couple of others showed up.  Here’s a shot for scale.

You can notice a couple of things about the base from this.  First, at each corner near the ground is a plaque with a translation of the markings; sometimes with blanks where the archeologists couldn’t read it due to weathering.  Second, at the point of the actual obelisk meeting the new base, there are “crabs” holding the obelisk steady.  These crabs are modern, but are based on the stone ones in the Metropolitan Museum just across the way.  One at each corner holds the obelisk upright.

If you like history, and I do, the sight of Cleopatra’s Needle is quite inspiring and impressive.  If you want to know more about it, I’d suggest the Wikipedia article.

-H