Robert Rosen

 

It's been hot in New York City. And humid. How hot is it? Nothing like the 120 degrees in Las Vegas or the 130 in Death Valley. But as I stepped off the elevator the other day after taking a walk, my neighbor asked if it was raining.

 

"No, I'm sweating," I said.

 

I'm dedicating this mid-summer post to memories of cooler days. The photo, taken in Washington Square Park the morning of February 13, 2024, was one of those days.

 

It doesn't snow much in New York anymore, not like it did in the 60s and 70s when you could count on three or four good blizzards every winter to shut down the schools. But it snowed that morning, coating the park in a pristine white frosting. By evening, every snowflake had melted.

 

That's just the way it goes these days.

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I've been reading The Overstory, by Richard Powers, a book about activists who try to save giant redwoods and Douglas firs, some more than a thousand years old, from logging companies determined to clear-cut entire forests. The book got me thinking about ancient trees, and the other day, as I was walking around Washington Square Park, I noticed that some of the trees looked like they'd been there a long time, maybe since the Civil War. "What's the oldest tree in Washington Square Park?" I asked Google. The answer surprised me.

 

In the northwest corner of the park is an enormous English elm, planted, according to some sources, in 1679, soon after the British took possession of New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it New York. The area was farmland surrounded by a marsh. Minetta Creek flowed down what would one day become Minetta Lane and Minetta Street.

 

The tree, 344 years old and 133 feet tall, is the oldest living thing in Manhattan. Its roots are thought to reach halfway across the park. Since nothing can live that long and be that big without having a legend attached to it, the English elm is also known as "The Hanging Elm," though there's no official record of anyone having been hanged from it. People were hanged from a gallows erected near the current location of the park's fountain and buried in the potter's field that's now the eastern two-thirds of the park. More than 20,000 bodies still lie underneath Washington Square, many of them victims of the yellow-fever epidemics that ravaged the city in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The elm has seen a lot.

 

I approached the northwest corner of the park looking for the tree. There was no mistaking it. With a trunk almost six feet in diameter, it dwarfs the surrounding trees. The elm seems to call out, "I'm the tree." I've walked by it a thousand times and wondered how I never noticed it before. I tried to take a picture of the entire tree but couldn't fit it all into the frame, not even close. So I settled for a photo of the bottom part of the trunk, which best communicates the enormity of an old English elm that will probably outlast me and you, too.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.