Prospect Park in Four Seasons

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In Search of the American Dream--Peace, Nature, Sanity

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

Prospect Park is the only way I can stay sane in overly-peopled Brooklyn. I’m in the park almost every day, in every season. Instead of catching the subway at the nearest station, I usually walk half a mile to the park, and then half a mile within the park, to catch the subway after a 20-minute walk.

During rush hour, the park isn’t too busy. I can take my eyes off the path, stop watching for oncoming foot traffic, and take time to look up into the canopy of leaves. I try to catch a beautiful image of nature, to imprint it on my mind before I head into the concrete, brick, steel, and glass of New York City. I look up at the leaves, the branches. They don’t expect anything of me. They ease my mind before I step out of the park and into the river of strangers, all bustling past me and wishing I would get out of their way. And vice versa.

Today I’m sharing some photographs from every season in the park. 

The birds I see and hear in the park are my only exposure to the huge range of creatures that share this planet with us. A heron, an ibis, swans raising their family, ducks, geese, the song of redwing blackbirds in summer. 

And turtles.That’s the extent of my exposure to wildlife in Brooklyn.

I have a friend who lives in the Great Swamp in New Jersey. She sees fox, bears, deer, groundhogs, rabbits, chipmunks, moles, voles…and turtles. I miss the biodiversity of my sub-rural home in New Jersey.

During the November 15th snowstorm, I walked at 4 p.m., in the dusk, in Prospect Park on my way home from the library, where I’d been working. As soon as I entered the park, I saw that I was just about the only person, and just about the only woman alone. I felt fearful – I do not want to undergo the anguish of a rape or other attack. I takes decades to begin to forgive. That's not how I want to spend my life.

But I also felt rebellious – why should I give up the beauty of the park just because there might be a criminal lurking? Women are trained from childhood to be afraid of this. Couldn’t I be free of the fear?

The park was beautiful in the snow. The problem with Prospect Park – with any park, for a woman – is that there’s always people around, so annoying, and then finally when you have it to yourself, you’re terrified of being attacked.

I decided to risk walking alone in the snow.

I said the same prayer that I said whenever I was scared on my bus journey around America:

I asked for two angels before, two on each side, and two behind me.

I couldn’t shake the fear, and I ran in order to shorten the amount of time I was alone in the park, and therefore reduce the risk.

And I left the park at the first opportunity. I would have liked to continue for another 20 minutes, to get closer to home. But it felt too risky.

So I left the beautiful, serene, empty park, where the snow was falling so quietly, so gently, and instead walked home outside the park, along a street clogged with traffic, with cars honking at each other and throwing up slush.

Two weeks later, in the morning before sunrise, a woman jogging on the edge of the park was repeatedly raped. 

WINTER

The park is beautiful and nearly empty in snowstorms. Blissful. But is that friend or foe approaching?

SPRING

SUMMER

FALL