This information will help you pace your Manhattan walking trips, and ration your stamina: there are about twenty street blocks to a mile (say, 72nd Street to 92nd Street) and about six avenue blocks to a mile (say from 11th Avenue to Fifth Avenue).

In Central Park, and especially in The Ramble (the uptown shore of The Lake, or ‘row boat pond’), it is easy to become disoriented and even lost. The paths curl and twist and you can’t see any landmarks for the forest. What to do? Find a lamp post. Look carefully for its identifier tag; there is a small, rectangular plate affixed to nearly every lamp post. The first two digits represent what street you would be on if the streets ran clear through the park.

The photo shows a lamp post located in on the 72nd Street transverse, correctly identifying its location as being near enough to the line that connects 70th Street were it to run through the park.

One blizzardy, adventurous morning around 4am, while I was out huffing around the park in knee deep snow I spied a coyote. I was able to track it by following the direction from which it had come, to its den in The Ramble. These identifying plates helped me figure out exactly where that den was which, I’ll bet, only I and the coyotes know.