By JANE LaTOUR

Follow Duke Ellington’s advice and “Take the A train.” Get off at 207th Street in Manhattan and walk two blocks due west. You’re at Inwood Hill Park. Among its distinctive features are the many members of District Council 37 who preserve the park’s treasures and its awesome green and natural spaces.

JoAnn Morales is a familiar sight to patrons of the park, with her barrel on wheels, her broom and her ready smile. She’s spent 10 of her 18 years as a parkie at Inwood Hill. “It’s beautiful when you come to work in the morning and see everything green and clean.” Ms. Morales is a member of Attendants, Park Service Workers, City Parks Workers and Debris Removers Local 1505. “I like to keep it presentable so the people who come here can enjoy it. I get a lot of compliments on the good job that we’re doing. It gives you an incentive to keep going.”

“Inwood is a great place to work,” said Al Cleveland, a City Seasonal Aide and a member of Motor Vehicle Operators Local 983. “I love the historic aspects of the park, the bald eagles, the tennis courts and baseball fields, the nature walks and the ecology center. It’s a beautiful place,” said Mr. Cleveland, who has worked in the Park for 11 years. “I have good co-workers. Everybody here is like a family.”

Environmentalist at work
With her educational background in the biological aspects of conservation, Urban Parks Ranger Mara Pendergrass is particularly well suited to her job. Leading tours for the public allows her to share her expertise on the park’s geological history and its natural inhabitants, especially the reptiles and amphibians. She worries about the effects of visitors who disregard the posted signs that warn against feeding the ducks and geese that swim in the salt marsh. “Feeding the animals attracts rats,” she explained. “Giving food to the ducks and geese leads to weird diseases like angel wing, which causes their feathers to fall out and their muscles to atrophy. Then they can’t fly.”

Ms. Pendergrass has been a member of Local 983 for six years. She’s worked at Inwood Hill Park off and on over the past two years. “I like the hill overlooking the park,” she said. “Inwood has a lot of interesting geological features. The ‘Indian caves’ are not caves at all,” she explained, “but outcroppings of bedrock pushed up against the hill. They were brought here by the glacier.”

Leah Worrell, a member of Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549, coordinates the special programs offered at the Nature Center. She’s happy to introduce visitors to Spike, a three-toed, eastern box turtle. Spike is one small part of the Natural Resources Group restoration project, an effort started in 1984 to restore forest and wetland areas in the city.

Neil Mackey is a Seasonal Assistant Gardener and a member of Gardeners Local 1507. His duties include pruning, planting, weeding and some preventive spraying early in the season. “It’s called emergent spraying,” he explained. “It keeps the weeds from overcoming everything else.”

Urban ecosystems
Although his home base is at Fort Tryon Park, also in Upper Manhattan, Inwood Hill’s special features appeal to the nature lover in him. “It’s unbelievable,” he said. “When you walk through the last virgin forest stand in Manhattan, or when you look out on the water and the sweeping views of the Hudson River, you’d never think you were in the city.” Mr. Mackey takes pleasure in his job. He likes the satisfaction of developing miniature ecosystems of birds and animals in the urban environment. “I enjoy bringing pleasure to people and improving the city,” he said.

While he pruned an overgrown shrub, which, he helpfully explained, is a leather-leaf viburnum, he shared his appreciation for the unusual topography in the park at the top of Manhattan. Each year in November, Mr. Mackey leaves his job as Gardener and takes up his job as a member of Local 1505. He has worked for the Parks Dept. for 22 years.

The park serves as home to bald eagles, to some of the largest tulip trees in the city, to some of the only natural forest and salt marsh left on the island, and to unique glacial features. It also hosts special events, such as this past summer’s Inwood Hill Blues and Jazz Festival. On a lazy Sunday afternoon, musicians such as Kenny White, Chicago’s Danny Draher, and Brian Conigliaro blew up a storm.

More to explore
Upcoming events include tours such as the Forever Wild Nature Hike, on Saturday, Oct. 23. Mike Feller, the city’s chief naturalist, will lead an early morning walk through the park. It starts at 8 a.m. at the Inwood Hill Nature Center. (Visit www.nyc.gov/parks for more information.)

Meanwhile, the members of DC 37 will be there every day, taking pains to polish and preserve the park. Enjoying life in the great outdoors is one of the benefits the workers appreciate. “I love the four seasons,” said JoAnn Morales. “Working outside in the fresh air, the sound of the birds — these are some of my favorite things.”