A1 Butzel was rangy ancj tall, wore blue jeans and a casual shirt, had glasses and a characterfille(j face, goodlooking in a Sam Waterston way; eye contact very direct, with a slight smile playing around the lips, which marked his willingness to entertain opposing perspectives, though occasionally his intensity seemed to vibrate into a tremble. I feel an immediate rapport with him, as though he were a double of myself if I had gone into the law (as I had originally planned), or vice versa, if he had become a writer (as he has at times wanted to be). He seemed smitten with the Hudson River, and eager to talk about it. "The Hudson is a great river. It's very unusual to have a great metropolitan area on a great river that connects the hinterland to the ocean. The Seine and the Thames are important because of the cities they flow through, but they're minor compared to the Hudson. It's a big river, bigger than most on the Eastern seaboard. The ocean works a long way inland. It's an estuary, a fjord. It has great historical significance-it was thought to be the key to the American Revolutionary War, then there's West Point-and incredible commercial history, especially after the introduction of steamboats shifted the waterfront from the East River to the Hudson. And artistic significance: the Hudson River School of painters saw it as the image of God's America. Baedeker compared the Hudson to the Rhine and said it was finer, because the Rhine had been so industrialized, whereas much of the Hudson is still picturesque and pristine.' I switch the topic of conversation to his participation in the Hudson River Park, and the skepticism he picks up in my voice pains him somewhat. "Sure, Hudson River Park is only a few acres, no one would mistake it for a large park space," he says. "But it's an experiment: the only park that has ever been built as a park space on piers. Very few cities are lucky enough to have so much public space along the waterfront. Cities like Boston or Baltimore have some nice open spaces, but they're dominated by commercial and residential use." "And Hudson River Park will be dominated by Route 9A," I interject OR THE BATTLE OF WESTWAY 109 OUTBOARD, "I understand your objections, but the trees that the Department of X nsportation put in along Route 9A will provide an overhang and give lc visual separation someday. It's like that famous photograph of ice in Central Park and the Dakota apartments in the background: skaters ш day you wouldn't see the Dakota because the trees would be in the way. Okay I'U admit that the Department ofTransportation forgot to put in an irrigation system, so many of the trees they planted on 9A have already died No one wants to take care of these trees, neither the DOT nor the Hudson River Park Trust. But they'll figure it out. And then you'll have a real separate sanctuary. Look, this city is very intense. It needs places of retreat. I can imagine Socrates out on the piers with his students.