Maybe I’m a tree hugger after all

Contrary to my disgust for hippies and jam music, I do actually love trees. In fact, I’m not at all sure about how these things became mutually affiliated. In my mind, trees are natural, powerful, inspiring, strong, clean, fresh and beautiful whereas hippies are exactly the opposite on at least one count.

You sometimes don’t realize how much you appreciate trees until they don’t make a regular appearance in your daily and weekly routine.

There are approximately five trees on the entire block surrounding my apartment building. And one of them is now just a stump because it fell on my girlfriend’s car during Hurricane Sandy (dumb luck … I know). As trees go, this sort of dearth doesn’t really do much for a person in terms of yielding any ameliorative benefit. 

So, my love for and withdrawal from trees is probably at least half the reason I make a point to run in Astoria Park or bike in Central Park a few times a week. (The other half is because I’m getting fat. No amount of sea level jogging, yoga or pedaling makes up for the calories burned by hauling oneself up a mountain six days a week).

I biked to Central Park yesterday and the presence of greenery put my mind (well, the 2 percent of it that wasn’t toaster-in-the-bath sizzling from weaving through traffic in Manhattan to get there) at ease. Although it is mobbed with horse carriages and gapers on the weekends, the shared bike road through Central Park (no bikes allowed on smaller paths or trails) is gloriously open in some sections on weekday afternoons. I think about a full second elapsed at one point yesterday in which I didn’t see anyone else on the street. And Central Park’s assortment of trees and rock formations jutting out of the jade-green grass even bare a convincing resemblance to real nature.

It’s just too bad that it’s such a daunting journey across the East River and the eastern part of Manhattan to get there and back.

Although I think the stereotype of New Yorkers being loud, uncaring assholes is generally not accurate (except for the loud part … that’s 100-percent true), I do believe that certain New Yorkers are just salivating for confrontation. They honestly can’t wait to berate you for something.

Riding along a side street and turning onto 3^rd Ave where there were construction barriers and wall-to-wall, blaring horns and traffic, I hopped onto the sidewalk for a few pedals to avoid getting wedged between a taxi and the barrier. You can get away with riding on the sidewalk in Queens – delivery guys do it all the time – but in Manhattan, it doesn’t fly. Within a split second of jumping onto the sidewalk (which was relatively empty, by the way), there were two older men holding little squirrel dogs on leashes, all ready to get up in my grill. The first one yelled “hey! What the fuck?!” as I rode by and the second one – as I slowly, carefully and in no way dangerously pedaled by him, screamed “IDIOT!” right into my face.

The serenity that the trees instilled in me was by now long gone as I pedaled home over the bridge listening to the amplified acoustics of dozens of drivers laying on their horns in stopped traffic. But I had to remind myself that I’ve yelled “idiot” at a lot of people in this city, both out loud and in the privacy of my crowd-addled head.

If you can imagine that in life, about one out of every eight or so human beings is a true idiot, then calculate that there are 8 million people in NYC … you’re dealing with a lot of idiots.

I’d rather be surrounded by trees any day.