The backstory has been told many times by now: how, originally, the High Line was an elevated railway line down Manhattan's west side, serving the Meatpacking District. Built in the 1930s, it replaced a street-level rail line - one that was so dangerous to pedestrians that the city had hired the 10th Avenue cowboys to ride on horseback in front of the trains to warn people of their approach. But in 1980 the elevated line was abandoned south of Penn Station, and through the 80s and 90s nature steadily reclaimed it until, early this century, it was imaginatively reinvented as a city park.

I've never lived near the High Line, but I remember noticing it sometimes when I visited Chelsea, before people were talking much about it. I liked seeing it, hulking inexplicably overhead; I liked its massive industrial dimensions, and its apparently arbitrary aerial zigzag between old warehouses, but I thought it was just part of that large array of Neat Historical New York Stuff that Nobody Seems to Notice. (I was wrong, of course; it had been noticed.)

When I first learned about its history, it was still fenced off. To see its unexpected vistas of native flowers, tall grasses, and young trees, you had to jump the gates, or just peruse photos taken by intrepid explorers who had already done so. (I was never so brave; I took the above photo, of the High Line's as-yet unreclaimed northern end, during a sanctioned Open House New York tour in 2007.) But it was already on its way to becoming a park, thanks to the work of local residents who were upset by the Giuliani administration's plans to demolish it.

The lower end of the park was opened, to gushing acclaim, back in June. But strangely enough, although I'm a fan of city parks, I can't get excited about it. Unexpectedly, the High Line, as a park - although situated plunk in the middle of the country's biggest metropolis - awakens my deep-rooted defensiveness about wilderness. I'm one of those people who can't help wishing it had been left alone to rust.

I know it's a futile wish, and that leaving it alone wasn't an option. I know that if it hadn't become a park it would have been torn down; I know that whereas access was previously limited to those willing to risk legal repercussions (a group that does not include me), the entire city is now welcome to enjoy it. But I still wish it could have been left alone. The new High Line is too safe, too trendy, too sanitized, too official. The intriguing industrial junk is gone, including the anonymous metal sculptures, and even the graffiti is being removed. I also find it ironic that in order to preserve the look of the trees and grasses that characterized the abandoned High Line, it was necessary to bulldoze them, scrape the structure down to bare concrete, and replant.

And now, of course, the High Line is subject to the vagaries and banalities of official existence. The park is being scolded for allegedly using Amazon rain forest wood in its furniture; a visitor is suing after injuring herself on one of the rail-themed concrete planks; a few people are griping about the cost of maintaining the space. I suppose I'm glad the High Line still exists at all, and I don't mean to belittle the work that went into creating a perfectly pleasant new public space. But I can't see it without thinking of those subdivisions - you know, like "Pine Hills" or "Live Oak Estates" - that are named for the things that were destroyed to make way for them.