If you’ve been to the Lilac Festival, you’ve been to Rochester’s Highand Park.

And if you’ve been there, you’ve noticed that it brings a swath of nature right into the center of a great city – easy to drive to, easy to walk to, easy to take the bus or the bike to.

Frederick Law Olmsted, the 19th-century landscaping guru, created the space, just as he created Rochester’s Seneca Park, and Manhattan’s Central Park. Streets and trails in Highland wend and wander. The ground heaves up and drops down. Practically every step creates a new space, a new vista, a new delight.

In the days of flu and COVID, Highland is a fine spot for the kids to run around, or for the old folks to ramble.

Highland Park is forested, but it’s not the forest that our forebears cut down. It’s a curated forest, an arboretum, designed in part to delight the visitor.

Mission accomplished.

Highland started out on 20 acres donated in 1888 by Ellwanger and Barry, tree nursery entrepreneurs, and is now up to 150 acres, operated by Monroe County Parks. John Dunbar (“Johnny Lilacseed”) started the lilac collection in 1892.

Highland Park is famed for its statue of Frederick Douglass, who made his home (and an underground railroad station) nearby. With its many hidden folds, the park has become the site of numerous other monuments and memorials. On a recent 90-minute visit, I stumbled across two monuments that were new to me.

One was a small stone at the base of a very large tree, honoring members of the National Women’s Service Corps. Our older son told me that this was a female companion to the Civilian Conservation Corps, or C.C.C., during the New Deal. (The women’s installations got to be called She-She-She camps.)

A little later on my ramble I thought, “Ah! THIS is where the Rochester Vietnam Memorial is.” Flowing easily along the lay of the land, the centerpiece of the Memorial is a paved patio, with the national flag, the M.I.A./P.O.W. flag, and the flags of each service. A winding Walk of Honor is lined with 280 uprights, each bearing the name of a Rochester-area person killed in the conflict.

Some parts of the park, like the Sunken Garden and the Warner Castle, I’ve never explored. But I HAVE repeatedly spent pleasurable hours in the 1911 Lamberton Conservatory – definitely a shelter in the time of storm, for I’ve enjoyed its semi-tropical warmth even as the snow and sleet beat down upon the windows. I also like spotting other turn-of-the-century architecture, in bricks rather than glass, for some of the park’s installations.

In addition to the Greater Rochester Vietnam Memorial, Highland Park is home to the AIDS Memorial; the Victims Rights Memorial; and the Workers Rights Memorial. It also has sledding, ice skating, geo-caching, concerts, athletic fields, and Shakespeare in the Park. Highland fits every mood, and every season. And admission is free.