Cherry Blossoms in Washington - NYTimes.com Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times Gonzalo Ruiz Navarro taking in the cherry blossom sights at the Tidal Basin in Washington. IT is a rite of spring for many longtime Washingtonians: Find out when the city's gorgeous Japanese cherry trees will explode in pink-and-white blossoms, and then avoid the monuments area, and the crush of tourists, for the duration. This year, however, your correspondent made an exception, and not because I figured that many out-of-towners were no doubt foiled by the blooms" extremely early arrival. On a recent Sunday I shelved the jaded attitude on learning that 2012 is the centennial of the trees" planting; that called for a return visit. I never had thought about Washington without its cherry trees; as a child growing up 500 miles away, I'm sure I thought cherry was the specimen that young George Washington cut down. Yet neither he nor Thomas Jefferson nor Abraham Lincoln, whose memorials are framed by the delicate flowers in countless photographs and postcards, ever set eyes on a cherry tree here. From past experience - seeing the blossoms for the first time as a new resident more than a quarter-century ago and again when my children were young - I knew what to do before heading to the Tidal Basin: Get in the zone. Prepare mentally, those of you planning ahead for next year's blooming, for lots of other people who will be sharing the view, no matter when you go, and just enjoy both the flora and the fauna. If there is light, and even if there is not, there will be people of all ages and tongues. My first year here, I jogged from my house on Capitol Hill at dawn on a weekend, thinking it would be pretty much me, the monuments and the blossoms. I should have known that others - on foot and especially in cars - would have the same idea. Still, I have often wondered: Just when do those photographers go, the ones who snap the postcard and calendar photos of the Tidal Basin in bloom without a man or minivan in sight? My trepidation was all the greater for knowing that since my last visit at cherry blossom season, a few new tourist magnets had been added to the area: memorials to World War II, the Korean War, Franklin D. Roosevelt and, most recently, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Yet if there are thousands of people, there are also thousands of trees to share, spreading beyond the Jefferson Memorial to the Washington Monument. Japan sent 3,020 saplings for that first gift in 1912 and another 3,800 in 1965. The National Park Service over the years has planted new trees from the grafts of the old and has so well maintained the originals that about a hundred of them have reached 100. Their aged, bent and gnarly trunks and branches make for a dramatic contrast with the young, fragile blossoms, a contrast that can be appreciated only by walking beneath the floral canopy. Yes, walking. No amount of mental prep can make me tolerant of the too many tourists whose idea of seeing the scenery is doing so from within the cars that creep along the roads circling the Tidal Basin. Looking for a close-by parking space? There are not many, and why would there be? The National Mall is the nation's front yard; the point here is nature, not Nascar. (And beware, on my recent mid-Sunday visit, the financially struggling Park Service had its folks out in force, ticketing vehicles in "Permit Parking Only" spaces. How much are the fines? a woman asked a ranger writing a ticket for a car with New York plates. "Twenty-five dollars and tow costs," he said. She skedaddled back to her just-parked car.) Confession: I did drive to the National Mall that Sunday, but I knew to take 15th Street through downtown Washington, pass the Washington Monument and wind behind the Jefferson Memorial to East Potomac Park. Parallel roads on that long spit of land, Hains Point, which juts into the Potomac River, allow parking in each direction. Still, the best bets for those without cars or familiarity with Washington's tourist-unfriendly roads is to take a taxi or ride the Metro subway system's Blue Line, exiting at the Smithsonian station. When you emerge on the Mall, walk toward the Washington Monument. From the cherry orchard there, to the left looms the pink necklace around the Tidal Basin, with the Jefferson Memorial as its marble pendant.