For nearly a decade, he has been trying to determine exactly how Manhattan would have appeared to Hudson and his men in 1609 had they disembarked and explored the place—to summon and depict the island as it was, just before it came under the shadow of that foot.
We came into a slight clearing and an almost imperceptible depression in the earth, which Boyer and Sanderson thought could be a sign of the stream. From the phantom creek bed, we headed north along a path of crumbling asphalt, which seemed to follow the course of an old road on the map. Up here, there were giant, healthy oaks. “We think that this is more or less what it looked like,” Boyer said.
A pair of tourists were standing there, trying to make sense of their map. They looked at ours and said, “You guys have a good map.”
The pond’s shore stretched from David S. Diamonds to the National Jewelry Exchange. It occurred to me that the stall where I’d purchased an engagement ring ten years earlier was right on top of it. We decided to stop by. The dealer, recognizing me, said, “What are you doing here?” We tried to explain. He said that he knew nothing about any pond and then gave us a look suggesting we’d better just move along.
The central idea behind the passage is nothing more than to inform about Sanderson's Mannahatta Project. The aspects such as all the resources and all the speculation that went into this project are also brought up. Also, the 3D model that is being made. These are all aspects of the project and pop up quite a few times in the passage. The passage then goes on to show the reader Sanderson's journey and his search to uncover the Manhattan of the past. It was also very interesting learning that certain things like ponds and streams are now just the bare land beneath some buildings. I also was surprised that waste and sewage helped extend the coast of Manhattan, making the island bigger. However, what i saw as the underlying message was the lack of care people actually have for what is happening to the environment. Over all those years, the island of Manhattan was changed from something that was alive and blooming, literally living, to something filled with buildings and roads following a grid system. What really brought out this point, is when the jewelry store owner told Sanderson to leave after he questioned the jeweler about the pond. While the majority of this passage is factual and focused on Sanderson's journey, there is an underlying message about the environment and the affect that humans have had on nature.
I agree that the underlying message is that many people do not seem to care about the lack of conservation that is occurring around them on a daily basis. Although this is not explicitly stated, there would be no need to even publish this article if people were aware of the reason behind the project. Thus, as readers, we should really take the time to question not only the meaning behind a piece of text, but also the reason why it was written in the first place. On another note, I like the information discussed earlier in your response. The different aspects of this project are important to discuss in relation to preservation, which prevails as the central theme of this article.
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