On a cold winter weekend, my commute from here to Queens on two buses and a train came a total of 2…read morehours. Why would I do such a thing? Because the Parks Department holds a bunch of free classes and events all over this city, and some of the really cool ones are in its more remote locations!
I signed up for a compass reading and orienteering class. I was the only one who showed up, so I got a private ranger led tour of the park by two handsome bearded park rangers, Teddy and Patrick. You're freaking missing out! You can sign up for a by-borough weekly newsletter from the Parks Department about these tours and classes (like camp cooking, fire making, tree identification, etc.).
I can see why this park doesn't do it for some people, but I'm going to share why I love it. For one thing, it packs a lot into a small space. A skate park, two large playgrounds, a bike/jogging lane, multiple ball fields and basketball courts, the largest series of workout stations I've ever seen (including some that are handicap accessible- in fact the whole park is), clean bathrooms, more trash cans than I've seen in any park, and a more wild area that leads off to a beach where you get a wide expanse of water and sky. If you close your eyes, the din of cars on the Belt Parkway almost sounds like waves. Other than that, the planes are all you hear, but the remoteness is still worth experiencing even with those city sounds.
For another, the park contains marshland that helps protect NYC from flooding during storms. Much like New Orleans, we need this land too, even though a lot of people don't think of swampy places with much fondness. The restoration of this site honors the land for what it is and the job it's doing, and has paths around the marshland so you can see the wildlife that thrive there. We saw geese, crows, sparrows, ducks, a praying mantis nest, oak trees, Kentucky Coffee trees, Hawthorne trees (they look like Christmas holly!), and something I kept calling "pink lemonade trees" because apparently that's what their berries taste like.
Finally, it's quiet, at least in the cold. All afternoon on a Saturday, the skate park was the most active place. The playgrounds and ball fields were quiet, a few dog walkers and roller bladers here and there but for the most part I had the place to myself. In the summer I hear a lot of people come out to BBQ. The whole neighborhood was quiet, very family oriented.
Get out and explore your city! :)
