For a year or so, the PATH station going from Exchange Place into the World Trade Center was out of service on the weekend for long-overdue repairs of the damage done by Hurricane Sandy. If you wanted to take the PATH into the city on the weekends, you’d have to walk from Exchange Place down to the next pier, and take the ferry over. You got a discount, I think. Or, they’d honor your Metro Card. I didn’t go into the city all that often on the weekends but when I did it was such a treat to take the ferry, which I rarely did. It’s a short little ride, but stunning, because you can clearly see the Statue of Liberty off to the right, the expanse of the harbor (which always makes me think of 1776 and British ships filling the water, a show of force – some woman wrote that it looked like “all of London was afloat” – I think of that all the time when I look at New York Harbor.)
And then you’d disembark on the other side. Instead of being ensconced in the big PATH station, where you would then transfer to a subway – never once going outside – you’d have to walk to the PATH station, through that outdoor area and in through the Atrium – which I still cannot believe was not destroyed on 9/11. It’s all glass!
That area of Battery Park is so open and beautiful, with people running, walking their dogs, people sitting on benches staring out at the Harbor – It always made me wish I lived down there. I’d spend all my time in that park.
One day, the mist was so thick it was a wall of white. The ferry cut through the white-ness, the mist hovering thickly over the water. You could see the Statue of Liberty only dimly, like a flickering mirage. Once I got off on the other side, I looked back behind me. You could not see the other shore. It was hidden by this wall of white. (Another reference: Mark Helprin’s Winter Tale, with that swirling wall of white surrounding Manhattan. I’ve mentioned before how that book actually changed my experience of where I live. It became a new frame of reference.)
In a little flower-bed right on the edge of the promenade bobbed red and white tulips. Beyond is just a wall of white. Normally, you’d see the New Jersey side of the shore, a wide expanse of water, and the Statue of Liberty out there, holding up her torch, for us, for everyone. But on this day, all was obscured. It was such a stark strange image. And the tulips were so beautiful.
