Though I entered Saddle River County Park from Fair Lawn, that’s not the only suburb encompassed by its 577 acres. It also runs through five other Bergen County towns: Glen Rock, Paramus, Ridgewood, Rochelle Park, and Saddle Brook.
I can
never get enough of bodies of water, and though the crisp air may have kept
more people from venturing outside, I was happy to take the path around this
pond without bumping into crowds.
Then
yesterday, I saw something unusual, which I tried to capture in this photo. At
that point early in the day, a large round hole had opened beneath a thin arch
of snow overhead.
I peered
more closely. I could see drops falling from the arch. Higher temperatures
(they reached the high 70s later in the day) would, before long, eliminate that
thin white veneer overhead.
And so it
proved. This morning, the hole was gone and the snow pile was even more noticeably
lower.
Continued
above-freezing temperatures, along with rain over the next few days, should
eliminate the white stuff at last, leaving only a memory of a storm that for a
while left streets impassable and frustrated those of us who had to shovel.
I took
this shot from a hill overlooking Veterans Memorial Park in Nyack, NY—a good
vantage point to see so much of the Hudson River in Rockland County.
I took the image that accompanies this post a couple of days ago in Pondside Park in Harrington Park, a few towns away from me in Bergen County, NJ. I was coming back from a trip into Rockland County, NY when I saw this park on the side of the road, and pulled over for a walk.
I have increasingly felt that autumn is all too short a season in my part of the country, with warmer temperatures encroaching on the traditional point marking fall. The past several days, however, the temperatures have dropped and the winds have whipped up. I had to pull my scarf around me a little more tightly the other day as I circled this pond.
Leaf-changing—heck, leaf disappearance—can occur so rapidly these days. The magnificent profusion of colors seen on trees just a couple of weeks ago is all gone. The many leaves crunching beneath my feet were all brown, as were those that remained on trees for now.
So, to take up the
question posed by Gellhorn so long ago, how long will winter be? I might have
worried more about global warming if we continued to have balmy
temperatures at this point. For now—fingers crossed—Earth is back into its
usual rhythms, I hope.
I am sure
that many of my readers who grew up in Bergen County either walked through the 40-acre
park, played in it or drove past it. Dedicated by a former township mayor in 1940,
it was renamed in his honor 19 years later. It was constructed with money from
the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal federal agency, to help hire
workers.
Government
assistance enhanced the park, too, including a Green Acres grant during the administration
of Gov. Chris Christie that built the current sportsplex, including a 60-ft. softball
field, 60-ft. by 90-ft. baseball fields, two basketball courts, football/soccer
fields, four tennis courts, and a handball court.
You can
see the sportsplex in the background of this photo I took while in the park, as
I made a circuit along the walking and bike paths. I gloried in the changing leaf
colors and the blanket they formed on the grass, along with a quiet only broken
by the sudden steps of two deer off to my right.
As with all things in life, enjoy it while it lasts.
(I took the image
accompanying this post three years ago this month in Pascack Brook County Park, roughly a
half hour from where I live in Bergen County, NJ.)
Though there are picnic areas, pavilions, playgrounds, and athletic facilities, this pond, with its circular walking path, is the centerpiece of the 79-acre park.
That was
certainly the case the other day when I walked in Saddle River County Park,
not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. I was especially taken with the
landscape in this image, with cherry blossoms springing to life with the park’s
wild duck pond and fountain in the background.
With sunlight pouring down that afternoon, I decided
to do something I’d never gotten around to doing in my 60-plus years in Bergen
County: walk around the perimeter of the 40-acre park.
I was especially taken with this hillside view of the
park’s sportsplex, and so I took this picture.
What I felt, when I took a jogging course called “Fitness
and You” as a Columbia University undergrad freshman, was misery.
It was the third class, when we ran a 2½-mile loop in
the park, that nearly did me in. More specifically, it was the hills leading from Riverside Drive to the Hudson River shoreline below.
It didn’t help to hear our instructor scream “Charge
up that hill!” to me and a couple of other laggards.
So three weeks ago, when I found myself back on Morningside
Heights to meet school friends, I basked in the sun and breathed in the fresh
air of the park. But I was far more inclined to join the couple on the bench in this photo
I took than the fellow maintaining his conditioning.
With an incoming class only two weeks from Freshman
Orientation (or, as some of us came to think of it, Disorientation), our thoughts
drifted back to our experience with that same process 46 years ago, when the school—still
dealing with the fallout of the ’68 demonstrations, amid a city still in
long-term deterioration—was hardly the most fashionable of the Ivies.
At one point, we recalled, students speaking at one
session gave us what sounded like an ironclad tip about survival in the neighborhood:
“If the IRT gets diverted from the Broadway and 116th Street
station, do not get off by Morningside Park. Go to the next
stop and walk back to Broadway.”
Forewarned meant forearmed about the potential for
crime in the area. I made countless trips as a commuting student to the campus,
but in the handful of times that the #1 train didn’t make its regular stop, I
followed the above advice—and so did other students I knew then.
Fast forward decades later. New York City has stepped
back from the fiscal brink, and “Seinfeld” and “Friends” have even made it fun
and even hip. Columbia has benefited from this change in the atmosphere, and so
has Morningside Drive and Park.
Back in 2006, New York City began a $390,000 renovation project for two ballfields in the park—part of a larger long-term reclamation that also saw new sidewalks from West 116th Street to West 122nd Street, an upgraded security booth at 116th Street, bush and growth removal projects along the upper paths, and perimeter lighting upgrades. More improvements have followed since then.
Volunteers associated with The Friends of Morningside Park have done their part, too, with monthly cleanups.
Five years ago, a Barnard student was murdered in the
park, briefly reviving fears from decades ago. Even so, a columnist for The
Fordham Ram felt confident enough in the surroundings to write last
October that the park was “the perfect place to grab a coffee and read a book.
You won’t be distracted and will only be inspired by the tranquility of the
park.”
This past Sunday, after getting together with my
friends, I felt curious enough to venture over to Morningside Drive. It was
late in the afternoon and I had to get home, and yes, old concerns about safety
still prevented me from walking farther into the park.
Though I have seen on the Internet that Clifton has
upgraded Weasel Brook Park, which I visited yesterday, it doesn’t seem
to have attempted to change its flow.
That may be just as well: in the age of climate
change, any belief that a dam project would stem flooding for good might have
been a dangerous illusion (as my hometown, Englewood, found out when Hurricane
Ida overflowed the banks of the creek across the street from me, on what had
years ago been labeled a floodplain).
Instead of residences that would have to be evacuated,
Weasel Brook Park features two basketball courts, a picnic area, a playground,
a multiuse athletic field, and, up a hill, the restored, 300-year-old Westervelt-Vanderhoef
House.
(“Weasel” is a modification of “Wesel,” a town in
Holland, and the first inhabitants of the area surrounding the brook were
Dutch.)
Mostly, it provides a chance to walk a dog, breathe in
the air, even to exercise. (Yes, there’s an “outdoor fitness system,” with stops
for, among other things, a “chest/back presser” and “cardio stepper.”)
But, as a longtime fixture of Clifton, and among a
group of county parks managed by the famous landscape architecture firm Olmsted
Brothers, this slice of land gives residents a chance, for a few minutes, to
slow down the pace of life in this Northern New Jersey city.
The picture I posted about then was of the Bergen County
Rowing Center. But it struck me that another suitable subject was how the bare
trees adjoining the Passaic River in one photo contrasted considerably with the
broad, open track in the other photo.
(Thanks to my friend Emil for the photo advice.)
It struck me full force, almost as soon as I parked my
car, just how much the “moderate drought” in this area is affecting this
79-acre space. Like other walkers that day, what I saw stretching out in all
directions was an expanse of brown rather than green grass. It hasn't improved since.
After a while, I came to a halt and concentrated on
the parts of the park that have drawn me up here every once in a while the last
few years: not just the reflections in the water that you can see in this picture I took, but also the patient fishermen and water creatures who have made a way of
life by this tributary of the Hackensack River.
If parents weren’t out eating, however, many were
walking around with their kids near the entrance to the park’s zoo. The lights
were set up for “Let It GLOW! A Holiday Lantern Spectacular,” which began on
November 26 and will continue from now to January 30 every Thursday through Sunday,
from 4 to 9.
My friend, who moved down to Florida in the early
1990s, passed away in late May. Though the warm temperatures down south were
better for her health during the winter, she had thought of moving back up here
several years ago, only to defer the decision because of the pandemic and insufficient
income in the changing real estate market.
On one of our many long-distance phone calls, she grew
weepily nostalgic about the changing seasons she missed from the Northeast.
Unable to pay my final respects after her death in Florida, I thought of
revisiting the town that had once meant so much to her.
Veterans Memorial Park, which I managed to photograph
just before sunset, seemed a pretty good spot to bring my friend viscerally to
mind again. It was just down the street from her home, and from the shoreline
she would often push off into the Hudson River with her kayak.
Nyack is a unique community, with a long history and
bohemian vibe to go with its picturesque riverine setting. But a place is more
than a point on a map or a real estate agent’s listing, but a collection of
souls.
In the restless journey of her life, one such soul
settled here for a while. Last Saturday afternoon, the sunlight along the
Hudson may have faded, but I knew that my friend’s impact on my life would not.
Today, I managed to get some walking in before, the
meteorologists predicted, another major storm like yesterday’s arrived. So I
ambled along on the west side of the Hackensack River in Foschini Park, then crossed
the William F. Ryan Memorial Bridge to Bogota’s Oscar E. Olsen Park.
There, I sat in a gazebo, where I took several photos,
including the one seen here.
It all changes when the clocks are turned back an
hour, as they were this weekend. From this point on, there are few hours to
take advantage of the waning sunlight—a difficulty for those of us on a
more-or-less 9-to-5 schedule.
It can be mid-afternoon, with the sun burning
brightly, and before you know it it’s time to turn on the headlights as you follow
the line of cars heading home—as happened to me yesterday, shortly after I
snapped this picture of sunlight in Overpeck County Park, not far from where I
live in Bergen County, NJ.
