1、Lions and Tigers and BearsBill Buford1 So I thought Id spend the night in Central Park, and, having stuffed my small rucksack with a sleeping bag, a big bottle of mineral water, a map, and a toothbrush, I arrived one heavy, muggy Friday evening in July to do just that: to walk around until I got so

2、tired that Id curl up under a tree and drop off to a peaceful, outdoorsy sleep. Of course, anybody who knows anything about New York knows the citys essential platitudethat you dont wander around Central Park at nightand in that, needless to say, was the appeal: it was the thing you dont do. And, fr

3、om what I can tell, it has always been the thing you dont do, ever since the Parks founding commissioners, nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, decided that the place should be closed at night. Ogden Nash observed in 1961:If you should happen after darkTo find yourself in Central Park,Ignore the pa

4、ths that beckon youAnd hurry, hurry to the zoo,And creep into the tigers lair.Frankly, youll be safer there.2 Even now, when every Park official, city administrator, and police officer tells us that the Park is safe during the day,they all agree in this: only a fool goes there at night.Or a purse sn

5、atcher, loon, prostitute, drug dealer, murderernot to mention bully, garrotter, highway robber.3 I arrived at nine-fifteen and made for the only nocturnal spot I knew: the Delacorte Theatre.Tonights show was The Taming of the Shrew.Lights out, applause, and the audience began exiting.So far, so norm

6、al, and this could have been an outdoor summer-stock Shakespeare production anywhere in America,except in one respect: a police car was now parked conspicuously in view, its roof light slowly rotating.The police were there to reassure the audience that it was being protected;the rotating red light w

7、as like a campfire in the wild, warning whats out there to stay away.4 During my first hour or so, I wandered around the Delacorte, reassured by the lights, the laughter,the lines of Shakespeare that drifted out into the summer night.I was feeling a certain exhilaration, climbing the steps of Belved

8、ere Castle all alone,peeking through the windows of the Henry Luce Nature Observatory, identifying the herbs in the Shakespeare Garden,when, after turning this way and that, I was on a winding trail in impenetrable foliage, and, within minutes, I was lost.5 There was a light ahead, and as I rounded

9、the corner I came upon five men, all wearing white T-shirts, huddled around a bench.I walked past, avoiding eye contact, and turned down a path, a narrow one, black dark, going down a hill, getting darker, very dark.Then I heard a great shaking of the bushes beside me and froze.Animal? Mugger? Whate

10、ver I was hearing would surely stop making that noise, I thought.But it didnt. How can this be?Im in the Park less than an hour and already Im lost, on an unlighted path,facing an unknown thing shaking threateningly in the bushes, and I thought, Shit! What am I doing here?And I bolted, not running,

11、exactly, but no longer strollingand certainly not looking backturning left, turning right, all sense of direction obliterated,the crashing continuing behind me, louder even, left, another man in a T-shirt, right, another man,when finally I realized where I wasin the Ramble.As I turned left again, I

12、saw the lake, and the skyline of Central Park South.I stopped. I breathed. Relax, I told myself. Its only darkness.6 About fifteen feet into the lake, there was a large boulder, with a heap of branches leading to it.I tiptoed across and sat, enjoying the picture of the city again, the very reassurin

13、g city.I looked around. There was a warm breeze, and heavy clouds overhead, but it was still hot, and I was sweating.Far out in the lake, there was a lightsomeone rowing a boat, a lantern suspended above the stem.I got my bearings. I was on the West Side, around Seventy-seventh.The far side of the l

14、ake must be near Strawberry Fields, around Seventy-second.It was where, I realized, two years ago, the police had found the body of Michael McMorrow, a forty-four-year-old man (my age),who was stabbed thirty-four times by a fifteen-year-old.After he was killed, he was disemboweled, and his intestine

15、s ripped out so that his body would sink when rolled into the lakea detail that Ive compulsively reviewed in my mind since I first heard it.And then his killers, with time on their hands and no witnesses, just went home.7 One of the first events in the park took place 140 years ago almost to the day

16、: a band concert.The concert, pointedly, was held on a Saturday, still a working day, because the concert, like much of the Park then, was designed to keep the citys rougher elements out.The Park at night must have seemed luxurious and secludeda giant evening garden party.The Park was to be strolled

17、 through, enjoyed as an aesthetic experience, like a walk inside a painting.George Templeton Strong, the indefatigable diarist, recognized, on his first visit on June 11, 1859, that the architects were building two different parks at once.One was the Romantic park, which included the Ramble, the car

18、efully designed wilderness, wild nature re-created in the middle of the city.The other, the southern end of the Park, was more French: ordered, and characterized by straight lines.8 I climbed back down from the rock. In the distance, I spotted a couple approaching.Your first thought is: nutcase?But

19、then I noticed, even from a hundred feet, that the couple was panicking:the man was pulling the woman to the other side of him, so that he would be between her and me when we passed.The woman stopped, and the man jerked her forward authoritatively.As they got closer, I could see that he was tall and

20、 skinny, wearing a plaid shirt and black horn-rimmed glasses;she was a blonde, and looked determinedly at the ground, her face rigid.When they were within a few feet of me, he reached out and grabbed her arm.I couldnt resist: just as we were about to pass each other, I addressed them, forthrightly:

21、Hello, good people!I said. And how are you on this fine summer evening?At first, silence, and then the woman started shrieking uncontrollablyOh, my God! Oh, my God!and they hurried away.9 This was an interesting discovery. One of the most frightening things in the Park at night was a man on his own.

22、One of the most frightening things tonight was me.I was emboldened by the realization: I was no longer afraid; I was frightening.10 Not everyone likes the Park, but just about everyone feels he should.This was at the heart of Henry Jamess observations when he visited the Park, in 1904.The Park, in J

23、amess eyes, was a failure, but everyone, as he put it, felt the need to keep patting the Park on the back.By then, the Parks founders had died, and the Park, no longer the domain of the privileged, had been taken over by immigrants.In fact, between Jamess visit and the nineteen-thirties, the Park mi

24、ght have been at its most popular, visited by ten to twenty million a year.The Park in fact was being destroyed by overuse, until 1934, when the legendary Robert Moses was appointed the Parks commissioner.Moses was responsible for the third design element in the Parkneither English nor French, neith

25、er Romantic nor classical,but efficient, purposeful, and unapologetically American.He put in baseball diamonds, volleyball courts, and swimming pools.He even tried to turn the Ramble into a senior citizens recreation center, but was stopped by the protesting bird-watchers.The irony was that by the e

26、nd of the Moses era the Park was dangerous.11 In my new confidence I set out for the northern end of the Park.Near the reservoir, a gang of kids on bicycles zoomed across the Eighty-fifth Street Transverse, hooting with a sense of ominous power.A little later, there was another gang, this one on foo

27、tabout a dozen black kids, moving eastward, just by the running track.I kept my head down and picked up my pace, but my mind involuntarily called up the memory of the 1989 incident,in which a young investment banker was beaten and sexually assaulted by a group of kids on a rampage.12 Around Ninety-f

28、ifth Street, I found a bench and stopped.I had taken one of the trails that run alongside the Parks West Drive, and the more northern apartments of Central Park West were in view.I sat as residents prepared for bed: someone watching television, a woman doing yoga, a man stepping into the shower.Belo

29、w me was the city, the top of the Empire State Building peeking over the skyline.George Templeton Strong discovered the beauty of Central Park at night on July 30, 1869, on a starlit drive with his wife.But tonight, even if it werent clouding over, thered be no stars.Too much glare. The Park is now

30、framed, enveloped even, by the city,but there was no escaping the recognition that this citycontrived, man-made, glaringly obtrusive,consuming wasteful and staggering quantities of electricity and water and energywas very beautiful.Im not sure why it should be so beautiful; I dont have the vocabular

31、y to describe its appeal.But there it was: the city at night, viewed from what was meant to be an escape from it, shimmering.13 I walked and walked. Around one-thirty, I entered the North Woods, and made my way down to what my map would later tell me was a stream called the Loch.The stream was loud,

32、 sounding more like a river than a stream.And for the first time that night the city disappeared: no buildings, no lights, no sirens.14 I was tired. I had been walking for a long time.I wanted to unroll my sleeping bag, out of view of the police, and fall asleep.I was looking forward to dawn and bei

33、ng awakened by birds.15 I made my way down a ravine. A dirt trail appeared on my left. This looked promising.I followed it, and it wound its way down to the stream.I looked back: I couldnt see the trail; it was blocked by trees.This was good. Secluded. I walked on. It flattened out and I could put a

34、 sleeping bag here.This was good, too. Yes: good. There were fireflies, even at this hour,and the place was so dark and so densely shrouded by the trees overhead that the light of the fireflies was hugely magnified;their abdomens pulsed like great yellow flashlights.16 I eventually rolled out my sle

35、eping bag atop a little rise beside the bridle path by the North Meadow,and then I crawled inside my bag and closed my eyes.And then: snap! A tremendous cracking sound. I froze, then quickly whipped round to have a look: nothing.A forest is always full of noises.How did I manage to camp out as a kid

36、? Finally, I fell asleep.17 I know I fell asleep because I was awake again.Another branch snapping, but this sound was differentas if I could hear the tissue of the wood tearing.My eyes still closed, I was motionless. Another branch, and then a rustling of leaves.No doubt: someone was there. I could

37、 tell I was being stared at; I could feel the staring. I heard breathing.18 I opened my eyes and was astonished by what I saw.There were three of them, all within arms reach. They looked very big.At first I didnt know what they were, except that they were animals.Maybe they were bears, small ones.Then I realized; they were