The oldest tree in Manhattan is in the northwest corner of Washington Square Park. An English elm. Three hundred and thirty years old. They call it the Hangman's Elm because they say they hung people from it during the Revolution. Traitors. Prisoners. Deserters. The tree was the gallows before there was a gallows. The rope went over the branch and the person went up and the tree kept growing.

Nobody knows if they actually hung anyone from it. No records. No documents. No proof. The legend is the proof. Three hundred years of people walking past the tree and saying that is where they hung people and the saying made it true. The tree became the story and the story became the tree. The Hangman's Elm is the oldest piece of oral history in New York City.

I sat under that tree a thousand times. I leaned my guitar case against the trunk and I played for whoever stopped. The bark was rough and deep and the roots came up through the sidewalk and the branches made a ceiling over the bench. The tree was the best venue I ever played. No cover charge. No sound system. No bouncer. Just an elm that had been standing there since before the city existed.

The tree is alive. Three hundred and thirty years and it is still alive. It survived the Revolution. It survived the yellow fever. It survived the construction of the park and the subway underneath and the riots and the folk revival and the heroin and the gentrification. The elm does not care about your century. The elm is working on a different clock. The elm is patient the way only a tree can be patient. You and I are a season. The elm is the calendar.

They put a fence around it now. A small iron fence. To protect the tree from people and to protect the legend from forgetting. The fence says this tree matters. But the tree knew it mattered before the fence. The tree was here before the city. The tree will be here after the fence rusts. The Hangman's Elm is not a monument. The Hangman's Elm is a witness. And a witness does not need a fence.

See also: Potter's Field, Washington Square