Beauty and the Tepee: Central Park and Riverside go to the mat

Today I went to Central Park to revisit the site of Seneca Village, a nineteenth century African American community, for an article I’ve been working on. Then I walked inside the park from 82nd Street to 108th. Central Park’s dazzling beauty made me feel, well, defensive about my park, Riverside Park.

I mean, okay, so we don’t have the loch:

And we don’t have pretty little wooden bridges:

And yeah, it’s true, we don’t have the reservoir:

But we have other things. Stranger things. We have … tepees. Oh, yes, we do.

We have small tepees:

And we have teeny tiny tepees:

Who is building tepees and why so small? Does a clan of teeny tiny tepee builders live unseen in Riverside Park? And who is destroying their tepees? Because the very day after the tepees appeared, this is what we found:

Is it the Riverside T. rex that leaves these teeny tiny tepee bones where once was a teeny tiny tepee?

Sad.

I’ll visit Central Park and revel in its beauty. But my heart is with the mysteries of Riverside.

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