In Flight and Bloom: The Pulse of Migration on the Upper West Side

 By Yvonne Vávra

Once again, Upper West Siders find themselves in the perfect spot. We’re in the right place at the right time, with front-row seats to two major events making their grand annual entrance in the city.

First, millions of birds are migrating north as April and May mark the peak of their journey along the East Coast. New York City happens to sit directly in their path, and they love Central Park and Riverside Park as stopovers to rest and refuel. Birds, they’re just like us.

The parks are dressing up for the occasion: With all the neurotic temperature swings we’ve been experiencing, the first cherry trees west of the Central Park Reservoir have already begun to bloom. Over the next few weeks, the parks will slip into their springtime finest, as thousands of cherry blossoms are about to unfurl into a stunning array of pink.

The birds flying above and the cherry blossoms springing to life bring song, scent, and a pinkifying of our mood — not to mention a reminder of the beauty of change, new beginnings, and migration as a fundamental part of life. Moving from one place to another is how all creatures respond to nature’s cyclical rhythm. Animals do it, humans do it, seeds do it, cells, genes and clouds do it, even ideas do it. Migration is simply how all life moves along.

Crossing the Upper West Side skies, the millions of birds are on a global search for food and suitable breeding conditions, migrating instinctively from places where resources are scarce. The cherry trees tell a different kind of migration story — one of cultural exchange. Brought to the U.S. as a gift from Japan, where the cherry blossom, or sakura, is one of the nation’s most beloved symbols, the trees now bloom in New York City as a testament to the friendship between the two countries. Their journey to a new home wasn’t without its challenges. The trees were originally slated to arrive in 1909, but the steamer carrying them got lost at sea. Three years later, Japan sent 3,020 new trees, and this time, on April 28, 1912, they were safely planted in Riverside Park and its adjacent Sakura Park in Morningside Heights at 122nd Street.

In Japanese culture, cherry blossoms represent renewal and the transience of life. Beauty is fleeting, but how beautiful the fleeting can be! With the arrival of these trees, those meanings took root in New York, now playing their part in the city’s constant transformation. Migration — whether of birds, trees, or people — shapes and enriches the places it touches, forging new connections. All of us creatures are constantly evolving, searching for better ways or places to blossom, and in that, we find our common thread. In this city especially, migration is part of everyone’s story — for some, an old story; for others, a recent one.

Mine is one of the more recent ones. I migrated to this country 15 years ago, in search of somewhere to belong. Like the birds, I followed an instinct to find a place where I could thrive. And it took a while to adapt. The chaos of New York is not easy to navigate for a German who’d love for everyone to, please, wait for the green light to cross the street, because otherwise — don’t you see?! —  society at large will fall apart. I had to start from scratch, and often, it all felt wrong, like being a tree on a boat, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, getting swallowed by the sea.

But I was fueled by my intense love for the city. I found myself laughing out loud on the streets whenever I realized I was actually here. I touched the buildings (and still do) as if I wanted to hold hands with the city. This enthusiasm was something I brought to my new connections, spreading that naive, hopeful energy available only to new arrivals. While my friends saw a smelly subway stuck in tunnels, I marveled at the fact that it runs 24/7. Back in Berlin, if you had night business to handle and it wasn’t a weekend, it would be bus time and it would take a while. It’s this fresh perspective, full of discovery and optimism, that keeps the New York Spirit alive.

I was fortunate, and in this city, a lot depends on luck. Many migration stories are filled with much more hardship and struggle for survival. But no matter how difficult or smooth, every migration adds value to the city’s ecosystem, infusing it with the passion of new beginnings. I hope you’ll find a moment to experience it yourself this weekend — taking in the birds in flight, the cherry blossoms in bloom, and the energizing rhythm of migration at work in the city.

Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.

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