“That Monday in October, 1943. A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird…in the park…we giggled, ran, sang along the paths toward the old, wooden boathouse…leaves floated on the lake; on the shore, a park-man was fanning a bonfire of them…Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring…”
So said Truman Capote, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
There is always a day in October -- when pumpkins appear on the stands, the sky is cloudless and cerulean, and, most of all, the late summer’s heat has finally been fanned away -- that seems like a new beginning.
These are the days when hot tea is finally an option and sweaters are found. They are also the days that I think of Central Park and how lucky I was to have this extraordinary landscape as my childhood playground.
We jumped rope and played Red Rover; in the winter we sledded down Cedar Hill. We were blissfully unconnected, unlike the way children, from babyhood, are now. To see the photographs in the stunning Central Park Country: A Tune Within Us (SierraClub/Ballantine, 1970) is to glimpse another time.
The images can be misty and ethereal, taking us out of the city where they are located, or grounded and humorous, such as when a tired child leans against a green balloon.
This book caught my breath when I discovered it with my friend, Kate, who had brought me to the divine Book Cellar in the basement of the New York Public Library, Webster branch. My father, a retired librarian in the Queens system, brought me a copy of this book from the library when I was a little girl. I have not seen it since.
With a foreword by then-Sierra-Club president David Brower, and a beautiful introduction by the poet Marianne Moore, Central Park Country, reminds me of the power of nature in the city and new beginnings in October.