Rebekah and Tom report

Is it a lumbermill? No, it's the north part of Central Park.
Photo by Rebekah Creshkoff - 8/22/09

Rebekah Creshkoff writes:

I was away for the major storm last Tuesday. The North End of the park -- my end -- bore the brunt of it. Now there's an amazing number of tree crews and their trucks and equipment around, and the constant din of wood chippers and buzz saws. Trucks tearing up vast swathes of lawn and patches of woods transformed to clearcut slopes. Here's a link to the pix I shot on Sat. after three days of cleanup, but they don't begin to convey the extent of the damage:

http://www.longrivertaichi.org/treedamage/

Rebekah

Tom Fiore's report:

Hi Marie,

I have been away for a few days, and on my 4th visit to Central Park's north end viewing the sad tree situation, it truly was difficult to take in... some of these had become like old friends, simply expected to be there always. Life has many lessons. I'm not happy with how many trees that were damaged but not downed will be removed and with other aspects of the "clean-up" yet at the same time I do understand the ways & necessities of the folks that are making decisions and for what's being done there. In some other city parks such damages would take months or years to be assessed and in some areas the woods would simply be left to heal on their own schedule in their own way. Central is different for many reasons yet knowing that, I still have an internal view of a wild-ness.

I had a walk around most of the north end this Monday morning and it was difficult to see all the large trees being cut down, or cut up, limbs and branches shredded into chips or just hauled away. There seemed to be well over a dozen tree crews out, likely even more than that, from the reservoir path to both the northern corners and many places between. The damage is indeed worse than I originally had seen, a day after the storm of 8/18. More than a few areas in the north end will look rather different than before to anyone who noticed trees, and probably most park regulars would at least subconsciously feel a difference even without being here this week or in coming weeks while all the 'clean-up' work continues. It is very, very hard to watch a century-old tree being taken down.

Best,
Tom