The year is 1980. After 46 years of operation, the last train ever to run along the raised railroad known as the High Line makes its way down the tracks, pulling three carloads of frozen turkeys.

Source: Wikipedia

Now turn the clock back to 1847. The City of New York has just authorized street-level railroad tracks down the West Side of Manhattan. In the years that follow, street-level accidents between freight trains and traffic give Tenth Avenue the nickname “Death Avenue.” A group of men on horseback known as the West Side Cowboys provides some degree of safety, riding in front of trains and waving red flags to keep people out of harm’s way. 1929 becomes the year of the West Side Improvement Project, a joint effort between the City and State of New York and the New York Central Railroad, which comes after years of public debate about the conditions the railways have created. Included in the plan is the High Line, and the thirteen-mile-long project eliminates 105 street-level railroad crossings. Officially opening in 1934, the High Line runs directly into factories and warehouses. Trains roll right inside buildings, carrying items like milk, meat, and produce in and out without encountering the street-level traffic below.

Yet as the 1950s roll in, so does the interstate trucking industry, which leads to a drop in rail traffic nationwide. Our story now includes a new victim: the High Line itself becomes obsolete.

But wait. The history books are not finished with the High Line. For brevity’s sake, let’s cue the high-speed montage: as we race through 1999, we see the community-based nonprofit group Friends of the High Line form to save the structure, which is under the threat of demolition. The group proposes its reincarnation as an elevated public park. Now it’s 2002 and the City, partnering with the Friends, gains control of the High Line south of 30th Street. 2005 sees a design team of landscape architects set to work on the public landscape, and in 2006, construction begins.

Which brings us right up to this moment. It is 2009 and I’m leaning against a metal railing atop the High Line’s first opened section, which stretches through the Meatpacking District from Gansevoort to 20th Street, on a humid June afternoon. Because I live in New York, I’ve taken up the New Yorker’s hobby of people-watching (the less euphemistic term perhaps being voyeurism). I look around and see a young woman in black flowing pants and a cuffed jean jacket, with her face obscured by enormous black plastic sunglasses, stoop to inspect a small shimmery piece of gravel (an urbanite’s rare encounter with nature). She slips the pebble into her pocket. Elsewhere, boys in Ray Bans and slim fit cutoffs chatter in pairs as they gaze out at the tall grasses, like visitors to a gallery viewing a painting. Older men in crumpled cargo shorts and button down shirts, with wild gray hair and tortoiseshell glasses stroll about with pretty young wives. There are also Parks Department workers in taupe and green uniforms and the ubiquitous international tourist in long pants (despite the June heat) with camera in tow.

New Yorkers have long had a love affair with their green spaces, much in the way that inhabitants of other cities flock to their waterfronts. Central and Prospect Parks are abuzz with activity when the warm weather sets in, as the air above the manicured lawns becomes dotted with frisbees and kites, and cyclists and rollerbladers take to the paths alongside joggers and dog walkers.

But there is something different here in the air above the High Line. This is a park one visits in order to observe, in which one slows down and takes the time to become aware of what’s all around. In this way, it is perhaps a park uniquely of its moment: as the “Slow Food” movement, which aims to counteract fast food and fast life, gains a fervent following among a small but growing segment of New York City folks, slowness seems to be percolating into other facets of New Yorkers’ lives. Geoff Nicholson, in his 2008 book The Lost Art of Walking, champions a belief in pedestrianism as a method of discovering the world around us. Nicholson takes his cues from Baudelaire, who coined the term flâneur to describe a person who strolls the city streets in order to experience that city, taking in the spectacle of modern life.

The observant pedestrian who walks the High Line finds that the modern city experience can include an encounter with a rare type of coexistence: natural and industrial landscapes harmonizing in the same space. Upon ascending the slow stairs (yes, this is really what they have been called), where one gradually transitions from the busy street below to the quiet, elevated landscape above, one can stroll leisurely along meandering pathways lined with naturalistic plantings. Small birch saplings and sparse clumps of grasses look newly transplanted—guests, still, in their new home. The plantings, by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations and Piet Oudolf, are inspired by the self-seeded landscape that grew on the abandoned tracks during the years after the trains ceased operation. To echo this idea, planted grasses and wild flowers shoot up from between the rails, a celebration of nature regaining control. Of course, the casual pedestrian probably doesn’t know any of this. He simply takes it all in as he strolls, watching bees scamper up the yellow cone-shaped blooms.

Alongside the pathways are a number of modern wooden peel-up benches, supported by a sloping concrete support that appears to lift directly out of the walkway. The benches direct the sitter’s gaze, willing him to notice what he might otherwise overlook. On one bench, my eyes fall upon a mesh wire fence guarding a construction site, draped with a fraying plastic blue tarp that’s making a soft noise as it ripples in the breeze. On another, grids of scaffolding obstruct the brick walls of buildings that abut the High Line. In the distance, cranes and high rises can be seen on the New Jersey side of the glimmering Hudson River. A little further down the path, there is a series of wide wooden sundeck chaise longue chairs, where sunbathers recline with books and magazines. One could almost believe he were poolside in the privacy of his own backyard were it not for the chattering Russian tourists on the seat beside him. Lying on a vacant chair, I note that I can see the pale-bricked facade of the Marine and Aviation building at Pier 57, and the Department of Sanitation not far off. A man in dark business attire carrying a leather bound portfolio smiles at me as he passes by. I smile back.

Other points along the High Line seem deliberately constructed to encourage the voyeuristic gaze, including a wide overpass that provides a fantastic view of the frantic milieu down on 14th Street. West Chelsea, I have recently learned, contains the world’s largest concentration of art galleries, and there is a stretch of pathway that takes the walker directly past the windows of the global headquarters of Phillips de Pury & Company. Further along the walk, there is even an odd little elevated square structure with steps and ramps that visitors can inhabit. Seated on the steps, one can gaze out of the wide windows and peer down Tenth Avenue, as cars and trucks rush out from below.

The High Line has no shortage of other notable features: a City Bakery rickshaw sells baked goods and refreshments. Enter the semi-enclosed former loading dock where the High Line runs through the Chelsea Market building and you’ll encounter a large-scale site-specific art installation, which currently features an impressive work by the artist Spencer Finch.

And yet, as I (slowly) descend the stairs at 18th Street back into the mess of cars and joggers and parking garages below, I think to myself that one of the loveliest things about the experience I have had up on the High Line is the absence of too much activity. I have merely been on a stroll, which has afforded me a close look around. As Nicholson rightly observes, “You can dress it up any way you like, but walking remains resolutely simple.”