In the preceding post, I replicated the guide to the World Trade Center Site. It contains a lot of fascinating information about what was, is and will be. The story of the survivor tree is one to be remembered.
Just so you understand the sequence of the photographs there are three groups:

A: a walk around Battery Park City and a visit to the atrium that has been reconstructed

B: the visit to the WTC site: as you view the photos, just keep reminding ourself of the scale of the people against the buildings and the pools

C: and Zucotti Park where the Occupy Wall Street movement is still taking place.

Before our 4:00 pm appointment to view the site, we walked what felt like miles, in the heat to Battery Park; I wanted to see the atrium, an arched globe of glass that was virtually destroyed. It had opened onto the WTC plaza. We rested for a while and then hauled ourselves up and walked almost for a half hour to the site. There is so much construction going on that it is difficult to walk directly. There is a subway overpass and the amount of stairs was exasperating. Luckily we found an elevator.

I have already reported on the procedure to enter the site in the previous blog.

As I said, “The sound of water rushing and rushing. The sound never ends. A natural, calming, white-noise sound, of life giving water.”

Let me try to explain.

I became emotionally shut down. I registered everything intellectually, I took many photographs, I ran my hand along names, I heard the roaring water of the forever flowing downward fountains, I saw the huge footprints of the towers, I looked upward to the new building that will soon begin to replace them.

I knew if I let myself really feel I wouldn’t be able to control myself. In fact, as I was walking around the perimeter before entry I choked up; I remembered people falling from the heavens. I was disoriented without the towers as landmarks.

I wouldn’t allow myself to cry. I went numb.

I observed thousands of people observing what I was observing, in fact I prefered to photograph the people. I became one step removed from reality by looking through their eyes.

I was exhausted; perhaps part of the drain was due to the emotional component and trying to deny it: the pain, the horror. It was, in effect, all cleaned up, sterilized of dust and blood. Kind of like visiting the concentration camps; you know what you are seeing and what it represents but it is still too much to process, just too much.

I saw people photographing one another but there is something perverse about lining up in front of a disaster site and smiling. It seems to be a tourist thing.

Each year, I would watch the commemoration, hear the “names” see the reflecting pools on the building footprint but I never got a sense of the enormity of the scale and of the event. Just the sadness, the pervasive sadness.

So, there is the sound of water roaring that never stops and water flowing down, down, down into a pit and then there is another pit in the center but it is impossible to see the bottom from any angle. It says: “I am an event that you will never be able to understand, I am an abyss and I flow into darkness, down, down…” and yet the light plays upon the water and the white noise of the roar is comforting yet throws you off balance: there were buildings here of great height, how can there now be nature?

You’ll notice that the water is “combed” into into individual strands that continually fall and meet as one body in the huge pool, made by the foundation of the towers. Then the pool descends again. From wherever you stand you are unable to see the bottom.

Still, one tree survived, The “Survivor Tree,” a Callery pear that was planted on the original site thirty years ago, and after the disaster it was reduced to a mere eight foot stump. The tree was planted in a city park and revived, in fact it grew to thirty feet and flowered again. In 2010 is was uprooted by storms. Later in the year it was replanted on the site. It is a tree of hope.

The glass building is the entrance to the future museum. If you peek in you can see two saved tridents, the fork shaped structures which rimmed the lower outside of the building. They beautifully reflect all that is around them. So many of the enormous buildings being erected are glass and they almost disappear into the clouds.

The final set of photographs were taken at Occupy Wall Street in Zucotti Park.
>Click on photos to enlarge<

A: Battery Park area, the reconstructed Atrium

Lady Liberty

The habor

The Wintergarden

A break from the heat

B: The WTC site

Lower Manhattan

The New Freedom Tower was still being erected

The names: never end

People still want to show they have visited

The names

The abyss

surrounding area

On to

The WTC Blogs: Part 6: The New World Trade Center, Its Story And Incredible View

reply greenwytch wrote on Jul 13 this place is now on my bucket list, thanks to your telling of your experiences there.  ♥

reply welshdoug wrote on Jul 13 It’s a very emotive place, which is why we took no photos when we visited in 2008

reply forgetmenot525 wrote on Jul 13 thanks for sharing your story Sue, I just wish i could enlarge those photos, that water must be a fantastic sight.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jul 13 Hi, Loretta, try clicking on them!

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jul 13 Doug when you were here the site wasn’t open, it’s totally different now. I could swear you were here more recently!

reply forgetmenot525 wrote on Jul 13 Nope afraid they still wont open for me…………..I’ll just keep coming back and maybe it will eventually sort itself out.

reply davkal wrote on Jul 13 odd no matter what i do they will not open up

reply sweetpotatoqueen wrote on Jul 14 Thanks for sharing this important place in our history. I can’t click and enlarge the photos either Sue…pop up windows says “Photos not found”

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jul 14 Please give it another try, I am baffled. The photos open full page for me!

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jul 14, edited on Jul 14 video is here:http://sanssouciblogs.multiply.com/video/item/148/The-Sound-of-Water

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Jul 14 If it’s still a problem I’ll try to copy and paste the code to a new blog. GRRR

reply welshdoug wrote on Jul 14 sanssouciblogs said Doug when you were here the site wasn’t open, it’s totally different now. I could swear you were here more recently! June 2008. Lots of work going on.

reply sweetpotatoqueen wrote on Jul 14 Sorry…the photos still won’t enlarge….but it is fine. Such an interesting “share” …thank you!

reply opossumd wrote on Jul 24 The pictures are telling even in the small format. Your words paint indelible images anyway. I will never forget the description of the Survivor Tree – the emblem of death-defying hope. Can a human identify with a plant? Apparently, yes. And the white noise made by water. Thanks for the priceless share, dear Sue.