The Gates

Christo's exhibition 'The Gates' is currently flourishing in Central Park. I have been very taken by the exhibition, but was not quite sure why until yesterday. At midday I entered Central Park at 85th Street and Fifth Avenue and started heading north under the fluttering, floating saffron canvases that led the way. The park still had a blanket of snow from a storm two days earlier. I meandered into the far reaches and corners of the northern park. I journeyed to places I had never seen in twenty years exploring the park but the gates always led the way and kept me safe. I looked through the gates and saw buildings and trees and ponds and lakes and more gates and people with smiles on their faces and distant hills and skylines and very distant gates and animals and birds who were sharing the experience with me. When the sun peered around clouds the gates bathed in it's rays, and against the bleak, colorless, desolate background of mid-February, became flourescent. They glowed like candles and were often visible as far as the eye could see like a small army bringing hope and good will. They could be seen at attention through tree branches, or marching in file over hilltops sometimes with just their upper bodies showing. Everywhere were people walking through them trying to understand why they felt so good. Four hours later, and without intending to do so, I had circumnavigated the entire six mile perimeter of the park on the meandering pathways under Christo's every changing saffron sky. Here are some photos of the journey shown sequentially starting and ending just inside the park at 85th Street on the eastside as well as some shots taken earlier in the week . Enjoy. I did.