What's a Tree?

I eventually ended up with a small soft spot for NYC but I hated the place for the first three months I was there. I’m not kidding, I literally hated it. I found something wrong in everything that made New York, New York! Then the snow melted, and New Yorkers came out of their hiding places and filled the streets. People were (for the most part) smiling on the streets instead of scowling. I finally opened my eyes to the melting pot of people riding the subway and saw it as miraculous instead of crowded. I tried as hard as I could to resist my growing passion for NYC but in the end I couldn’t fight it any longer. NYC holds a piece (a small piece) of my heart.

I’ve lived in Nashville, LA, and London and loved all of them. So it seemed only natural to me that I would like NYC. But when I arrived to me NYC was simply unnatural. It literally is a concrete jungle. If not for central park I would assume that people walk around asking themselves “what is a tree?”

I looked back through the time I spent in each city and asked myself if there was a common denominator to connect my love for them. What I discovered was surprising-the parks (Centennial, Griffith, Hyde, Central). I’m from the suburbs of Cleveland Ohio. I’m not a huge fan of the outdoors. So why do I love parks so much? Why was I so in love with Central Park?

Central Park was the one place I could go to in the city and feel like I’d left NYC. Once I was far enough inside where I could no longer see the skyscrapers, but instead saw baseball games, wild life (aka squirrels and ducks), a zoo, beautiful gardens, horse trails, biking trails, massive ponds and people. I finally saw families acting like families, instead of smashing their strollers onto a subway and yelling at their other children not to poke the homeless. Central Park felt like the most natural place I could find in a city of crazies and concrete. Central Park made me fall in love with the city.