Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 7pm
NYCH3 #1495, HALT R*N!
Hares: Just Steve & Flabbio
The night temperature was perfect, warm but not too sweaty. The pack set off for this HALT run – hashers against long trails which promised no more than two miles and stuck faithfully to that gauge.
But its particularity was the way each element of the trail meshed with the next in the beauty that it held. First we were treated to bright orange on a glass skyscraper on the edge of the water, put there by the setting sun, albeit the river was East. Then up the steps to well-known Waterside and down again with the characteristic horn of a ship pulling out from the marina. Not the Health and Racquet ship, a big one. We ran alongside the river south in the new round Manhattan park with round metal grid tables where people were having their cocktail glasses of wine. The earthen paths were separated from the concrete one by narrow bands of yellow ribbon. Then a little later we crossed the road (and the FDR) into Stuyvesant Town. I clammed up. I was afraid. The trail was very well marked but sporadic, to provide a challenge. It was ok but I didn’t breathe easily till the other side. And the trail did take all the twists and turns. That is how we came upon the absolutely beautiful substantial burgeoning fountain in the center of the park. And then again back down into town, on eighteenth street. I looked because we passed three lovely houses niched on the south side of that street. Upon closer investigation, they are landmarked, sport cast iron verandas and were built by Cornelia Stuyvesant Ten Broeck, the daughter of Peter Stuyvesant, Dutch Director-General of New Netherland and its capital New Amsterdam. But it was difficult to see all this in the emerging darkness, inconducive to reading plaques, and so worthy of a return visit. Especially since I discovered in the process that Dvorak lived just a block south. Proves how there are still things of beauty hidden in New York, just when you think you have been everywhere and seen everything.