Off trail: only for the 1 percent

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Back in the day, when I was a cub reporter in Wyoming I spent quite a bit of time writing about and often visiting Yellowstone National Park. One thing I learned is that the way to get away from crowds is to get out of your car, find a trail, and walk 100 yards. The joke was that Yellowstone had LA-style traffic jams, but the truth is that most of the visitors arrive in July and August and 99 percent of them don’t stray from their cars (quite literally: around 1 percent of the visitors to Yellowstone apply for a backcountry permit).

I found myself thinking of those statistics this weekend in Central Park. Spring finally arrived in full force this weekend, and I have no idea how many people entered the park. Tens of thousands, I’m sure. You can see many of them here and here. But if you wander off the road and away from the grassy areas, you can find a little seclusion. I took the photo above in the northern woods. Central Park provides a little bit of breathing room for the Westerners like myself.

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