THE GATES TO THE CITY.(Central Park, New York, New York)(Christo)

Late November in Central Park, an afternoon of brilliant sun and boreal winds. I am with Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the artist-entrepreneurs, who have agreed to show me some of the sites for "The Gates," their long-delayed Central Park project. Although "The Gates" won't go up until next February, preparations for it have been going on since before January, 2003, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reversing twenty-two years of official opposition to the plan, called a special press conference to announce that the city had signed a contract with the artists. Christo, who is sixty-eight, wears a roomy black coat that fails to disguise or contain his lean, hyperactive frame, and he carries a black canvas bag containing fifty-two rolled-up maps of the Park, each showing a specific sector in detail. Jeanne-Claude, his wife, also sixty-eight (they both were born on June 13, 1935), has on a full-length down overcoat, but what one notices first is her bright-orange hair. We enter the Park at Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, and as we head north Christo grabs my arm and tells me to look up at the lampposts.

"Our gates will be five feet higher than those," he says. Sixteen feet high, in other words. There will be seventy-five hundred of them, placed at twelve-foot intervals along twenty-three miles of the Park's pedestrian paths, each gate consisting of two solid vinyl uprights and a horizontal vinyl crossbar, from which a length of saffron-colored woven nylon cloth will hang down to a foot or so above the height of a tall person's head. Set in motion by the wind, the fabric, as Christo describes it, will be like "a golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees." The steel bases for "The Gates" are scheduled to be installed in January, 2005, and then, early in February, about five hundred and fifty paid workers will elevate the gate assemblies and, on a single day, unfurl the seventy-five hundred fabric panels. All this is going to cost somewhere in the vicinity of twenty million dollars, every penny of which is being raised from the sale of Christo's drawings and collages of the project and other, earlier works by Christo, from the nineteen-fifties and sixties. "The Gates" will exist for sixteen days, after which the Christo battalions will move in to start the removal process.

Christo extracts a map from his bag and spreads it out on a park bench. "This is where we are now," he says. "See, each gate is marked on the map. Here the path is very wide, so we use our widest gates--eighteen feet. The smallest ones are six feet wide, on very narrow paths." Jeanne-Claude points out a tree with an overhanging branch that is lower than sixteen feet. "This means an interruption in the gates," she says, "because we are not going to cut any branches."

A little farther along is the entrance to the zoo. Christo says that they are not going to put gates in that section, "because of all those man-made structures. We don't put them at the Bethesda Fountain, either, or anyplace where there is too much architecture and decorative ornament." Turning left, Christo takes a path that leads across the East Drive and down to the Pond. There are quite a few strollers out, braving the cold weather. Christo and Jeanne-Claude call my attention to the paths that branch off from or run parallel to the one we're on. They want me to visualize several rows of gates, all visible at the same time. "In back of you," Jeanne-Claude says, "coming from there, a long row of gates, and in front of you, and over there." Christo stops, kneels on the ground, and unrolls a new map to demonstrate our exact location. Jeanne-Claude spots an egret, standing motionless on one leg in shallow water across the Pond. "It doesn't move," she says. "It must be wood." "No, cherie," Christo says. "It moves." "O.K., so it's real," Jeanne-Claude says. "Let's go."

We circle back to the Fifty-ninth Street entrance to the Park and walk to a black chauffeur-driven car, which is waiting for us in front of the Pierre, on Fifth Avenue. Christo and Jeanne-Claude both give directions to the driver, talking over each other and confusing him. When clarity is restored, the car takes us west, to Columbus Circle, where we get out and reenter the Park. Paths of different widths lead off in all directions, and I am again instructed to visualize rows and rows of gates. As we make our way deeper into the Park, Christo says that the light in February will be like it is now--low light with long shadows. "When the sun comes through it, the fabric becomes yellow-gold," Jeanne-Claude says. "You can see that in Christo's drawings." I ask how they decided on the saffron color for the fabric. Jeanne-Claude says that the original plan was to install "The Gates" in October or November, when the fall colors are at their height. "If you look at the colors of the autumn foliage," she says, "and then squint your eyes, you see saffron."

"But not only that," Christo says, interrupting. "We find this color is so spectacular with the silvery-gray color of the naked branches."

"The color will change all the time, in different lights, as it does with all our projects," Jeanne-Claude adds. "Mainly, we both just love this color. Are you freezing? I'm going to call." She summons the driver on her walkie-talkie, and tells him to meet us at Seventy-second Street and Central Park West.