Located in Madison Square Park is Maya Lin's Ghost Forest, a towering stand of forty-nine haunting Atlantic white cedar trees, is a newly commissioned public artwork. These trees were transported from the Coastal Pine Barrens in New Jersey.
The vision behind this project was to act as an environmental activist, a memory of germination, vegetation, and abundance, along with being a symbol of the devastation climate change brings upon us. Each tree stands at the height of around 40 feet. The trees overwhelm the human scale and stand as a metaphor for the outsized impact of a looming environmental calamity.
As you embrace the trees within Madison Square Park, you may notice a contrast between Ghost forest and the rest of the blooming greenery.
If you glance upward while standing under the park's resident trees and you see an overhang of Green, but if you look up while standing under the cedars and you see an open sky. Whatever foliage they once had is long gone, and their branches seem to have been shaved away. Only a few remain.
In nature, a ghost forest is the evidence of a dead woodland that was once vibrant. Atlantic white cedar populations on the East Coast are endangered by past logging practices and threats from climate change, including extreme weather events that yield saltwater intrusion, wind events, and fire. The trees in Ghost Forest were all slated to be cleared as part of regeneration efforts in the fragile ecosystem of the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.