Humbled and Renewed

Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest - New York City

We converged Bev and I, one of coming north and the other sourth to Carol’s in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. It was a long awaited reunion after the lockdown, starved, as we were, for the face to face companionship of old friends. Armed with double vaccinations, we traveled by train to the new Moynihan Train Hall at 8th Ave and 31st Street. That was the easy part.

Historically, the journey to the Greenwich apartment is simple, with several options—three stops on the A train, finished with a short four-block walk; a taxi ride down the west side; or on a cool, bright day, a walk east to Fifth Avenue, then a bus or walk south for 20 blocks. But this time there were no simple options.

Bev and I and our husbands bumbled, stumbled, and fumbled our way through a massive Pride parade weekend filled with gatherings and blocked-off streets full of costumed celebrators as far as the eye could see. Adding to our stress was dreadful, steamy weather (at least it wasn't raining). The combination produced a multitude of unintended blunt pronouncements at the crowds and a few at each other. We'd completely lost our social finesse and turned awkward from being too long in confinement.

Dinner in a well air-conditioned restaurant combined with a good night’s sleep repaired tempers and brought us back to adulthood. With apologies and laughing at the strangeness of it all, we, the three women, did what we love to do when we get together—urban hiking —leaving the men to their own devices. We strolled through city parks and streets, hopped buses and subways, explored a few favorite museums, and hunted for treasures like the best almond croissant. We ambled paths in the Little Island Hudson River Park, tramped the Highline to Hudson Yards, and sailed the East River New York Ferry from Wall Street to Gracey Mansion (East 90th Street), in awe of both Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines. 

However, every so often, I experience something so exceptional that it it seared my brain. On our last morning, it was Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest, a towering installation of forty-nine haunting dead Atlantic white cedar trees set against the skyscrapers surrounding Madison Square Park. Lin’s installation forced me to contemplate the horrific vastness of man’s devastating environmental destruction. My bones ached and my heart sobbed as I gazed at the trees. I felt the same sensations when I walked into Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial installation in Washington DC, its granite wall knifed into the earth, etched with the 58,000 names of Americans killed in that senseless war of human destruction. Both are wounds to our culture that may never heal.

I left New York humbled and renewed.