Nathan Schiller

One of the last areas I expect anyone to notice, when they look at a map of New York City, is the vertical sliver of green in the northwest corner of the Bronx. But that’s where Riverdale Park sits, tucked between train tracks along the Hudson River and a two-lane asphalt forest road with city speed limits. Riverdale Park is not a place I knew about until I moved within walking distance of it. Whenever I went to the Bronx, it was to run in Van Cortlandt Park (or to eat on Arthur Avenue in Little Italy). But, since discovering Riverdale Park, I’ve hovered between smitten and obsessed.

I love to run, a lot, and prefer running in the mountains, which does not lend itself to living in New York City. But I’ve made it work. I’ve half-memorized the two hundred miles of hilly single-track trails in Harriman State Park, though it’s taken years; that’s thirty-five miles north of the city. On a more daily basis, I’ve pioneered a three-mile loop in Prospect Park that hits every hill and mound while remaining almost exclusively on dirt and grass, a blueprint I applied, improbably, to the riverside park of Bay Ridge.

Now that I’m in Northern Manhattan, I’ve done the same in Inwood Hill Park and, across the estuary, in Riverdale Park, though the park makes it easy. I enter through the fence at the south, at its highest point. The trail immediately descends, with tight twists and turns, until bottoming out at a tributary trail that leads to a platform overlooking the train tracks and river. 

This first section is then replicated, with diminishing elevation and minor landscape variation, for the remaining mile-and-a-quarter of the trail due north. I usually run it all the way, because it makes for perfect training ground for trail races: roots and rocks, sidewinders, short sharp bursts up and down: terrain that commands the eyes and forces the feet into nonstop adaptation, legs and hips whipping in line, elbows and shoulders rotating for stabilization. 

From my home to the park’s end and back constitutes a six-mile run. But I’ve done twenty milers just piling on Riverdale Park out-and-backs. I find it meditative. Looking up’s a risk—and there’s not much to look at anyway, no lookout point or stunning scenery—so it becomes about ambiance: a thin forest on the edge of urbanity.

Last week, I was thrilled to realize that there would be serious snowfall the day I planned to take these photos. Indeed, by early Friday morning, five inches of powder had fallen overnight, quite welcome after but a dusting so far, especially since having been spoiled, last winter, with wonderland. But, after making fresh tracks up through Inwood park, after dashing across the salt-slush wind-swept bridge pathway, I arrived in Riverdale Park, only to want to leave.

Here’s what I mean. Not only does Riverdale Park have no destination, it has no optimal season, at least not to a runner (or family stroller) like me. In summer, substantial parts of the trails, especially the tributaries, are covered in brush, thick with the threat of ticks, and the boggy wetlands breed an intolerable racket of mosquitoes. 

Spring and fall are friendlier, but for an amateur photographer? Against expectations, I felt this most in the snow, when everything looked beautiful, but the same, with the risk of cracked ankles from slick rocks and buried branches. What’s the best part of Riverdale Park? That it’s atmospheric, not photogenic.