A few minutes after entering, you can see why this park attracts so many. Winding trails wrap around a pond. Trees sprout at the top of huge rocks and pedestrian tunnels frame landscapes like works of art. Every curve and each successive space draws you further.

In the 1920´s and 30´s, before the age of air-conditioning, my father once told me that New Yorkers used to leave their apartments to sleep in the park on summer nights. Was America any safer then, or did people take more care of one another during those days?

From the archive:

The looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

See also, from Adam Gopnik:

New York’s abundance lingers on as rumor and memory, but the city’s ground is intrinsically fertile, and I decided next to get a sense of the natural wealth of New York by eating things that are growing here by accident. “Why don’t you try foraging Central Park with ‘Wildman’ Steve Brill?” Gabrielle suggested. Steve, she explained, could point to everything sauvage that there was to eat in the city. I was taken with the idea of using the Park as a kitchen garden, like those country friends who scamper into the yard for fresh-cut basil.

A Sunday or two later, I found myself, with my children, following Steve on one of his encyclopedic tours of New York’s edible nature.