I got up one morning about twenty years ago to find my neighborhood covered in fog. In a moment of inspiration I grabbed my camera and walked a few blocks to Prospect Park, where I took this photo. Like this week, I remember it being unseasonably warm. Winter was still hanging on, with Spring yet to arrive and certainly no buds on the trees to herald the change of seasons. The fog was magic, rolling through the hills and valleys of the park. Prospect Park was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the same brilliant mind who created the better-known Central Park; but in Brooklyn he created a series of illusory landscapes designed to evoke the lost wilderness. Prospect Park is filled with vales and abrupt changes of scenery that reveal cleverly hidden lakes and groves. While the park is not surrounded by highrises like Central Park is, it's just as much an oasis in an utterly urban landscape. I remember how that fog bolstered the otherworldly illusion of it all. Tomorrow it's supposed to go back down to below freezing, but the jig is up. Winter's clutching at brittle naked branches. Time's up!
