It's a Natural

By John Hanc | John Hanc is a regular contributor to Newsday.

June 26, 2003

Ah, the Lullwater. What a fine name for this freshwater stream that runs through the heart of Prospect Park. Here, you can lull yourself into a sense that you're in the country somewhere, not the middle of Brooklyn; lull yourself into peace and tranquillity on the banks of this nearly mile-long waterway; lull yourself into thinking ... well, that the Lullwater is real.

"The whole water system in Prospect Park is fake," admits Tupper Thomas, president of the Prospect Park Alliance. "It's all man-made." It's designed to be in harmony with nature - even though it's unnatural. The great landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and his associate Calvert Vaux (the same dynamic duo that created Central Park) laid out the park with that very idea in mind. "To Olmsted, a great park should be a tranquil, rural landscape, where people could recuperate from the incessant pace of life," according to one park history. In Prospect Park, the hard-working citizens of Brooklyn (and anywhere else, for that matter), "could find a bit of the country right in their own backyards."

One of the best places to discover the "country" in Prospect is along the Lullwater - specifically, the new Lullwater Nature Trail, which follows the stream from the Boathouse to Prospect Lake, and features benches and rustic bridges, interpretive signs and marvelous views of the park's wildlife. "It's great for kids, great for people who are interested in being out in nature, as well as a good excuse for a nice walk," Thomas says.

Because of its location along the Atlantic flyway - the migration path for many species of birds - Prospect Park last year was designated as the country's first urban Audubon Center. About 200 species of birds can be seen here, many of them along the Lullwater, the first of a series of trails that will be opening in the next year in what officials refer to as the park's "restored" natural environment. And that's a good way to think of all 526 acres of Prospect Park - not a place that's man-made, but a place that man made in order to let nature reassert itself.