I set out for the Terrace of Crispness on an August afternoon. Traffic slunk along the BQE. A haze hung over the Manhattan skyline. My skin stuck to the car seat. When I finally pulled into the parking lot of the Staten Island Botanical Garden, at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, I had my doubts that anything crisp could sustain itself against the limpness of the day.
To judge by the map on the SIBG website, the Chinese Scholar's Garden offers a feast for the senses, comprising, among other attractions, a "Tea House of Hearing Pines" and a "Billowing Pine Court," a "Cool Jade Pavilion or Pavilion of Chilly Green," a "Gurgling Rock Bridge," and a "Meandering Cloud Wall." But on this afternoon, the pines were silent and still; the jade pavilion was lukewarm at best; the gurgling rock bridge offered only a trickle; and there were no clouds to meander across walls.
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Unfortunately, the garden isn't open at night, so the complete experience will have to remain in the imagination. But isn't that a fitting place, in a way, for a tiny corner of this immense city in which one might still discover a moment of crispness at a bend in a garden path on an August afternoon?