A long time ago in the Ramble

A Cardinal reason I’m here in the first place

A long time ago in the Ramble there walked a lady in yellow. Not bright yellow but not plain. A lightly washed-out bright yellow that could catch your eye as colors sometimes do when people parade them by. My gaze followed her for a little while traveling from the long hem of the sundress to the swinging gold braids of her hair.

I took a deep breath of memory and turned back to the warblers that drew me to Central Park’s wild places that day.

To get lost for a few hours on a cool, spring day was as much of a goal as I could conjure. The city overwhelms every thought and sears the synapses until I relapse into that wide-eyed tourist fumbling through the park, a gentle metaphor for the more treacherous canyons that surround me.

A shirtless man appeared out of nowhere and beelined toward me with his finger outstretched but slightly deflected like death spotting the living where the living should not be. He wanted to perform a dance, and I was standing on his stage.

The turtles are all out despite the cool, because they get their life from the sun, and it shines brightly down on the park. I see the woman in the yellow dress far below me now, walking by a lake, walking fast and away like she knows where she wants to be, and I’m reminded that I came here to do something but can’t bring it back to focus.

Shakespeare’s gift to the world?

A flurry of activity on the shore near the turtle turns out to be a House sparrow newly arrived from Shakespeare’s Garden to take a dust bath in a sun beam. These are not my favorite birds, but you can’t not photograph a bird taking a dust bath in a sunbeam.

Birds!

That’s what I came here for. I’m not a birder yet. Just fascinated by those who are and starting to recognize one species from another, and I plunge back into the darkest part of the Ramble where my camera and my eyes are useless. But I can spot the Cardinals and Blue Jays like the lady in the yellow dress by the way they parade their colors through the air, on branches and the ground.

Many years later, I let out my breath and recall that memory of Central Park and a younger me with less gray around the temples and a shiny goatee and the lady in yellow and the dancing man and realize I go find birds where there are no people now.

There is a lot of beauty in the natural world and a lot of people in the natural world and even beauty in people in the natural world. I can always get lost watching people. These days, I seem to enjoy getting lost just to watch birds.

The Ramble