MOUNT KISCO, NY — Plans to build a cell tower in Leonard Park are moving ahead at breakneck speed, but for those opposed to the massive project, there is still a slim hope.

At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss efforts to oppose a cell tower in a park as just another “Not in my backyard,” or NIMBY campaign. After all, nearly everyone wants to be able to play Wordle without losing service, but almost no one wants spoiled views, noise and environmental concerns that come with a large cell tower nearby. The activists passionately trying to protect an old-growth forest and popular recreation area in public, however, aren’t trying to protect their own personal interests — they are trying to save someplace special for all of us.

“It really is unspoiled here,” Theresa Flora marveled as she followed a well-groomed hiking trail in Mount Kisco’s Leonard Park. “It’s easy to imagine the long houses that might have been built by Native Americans on the sheltered high ground overlooking the river.”

As Flora helps me navigate the narrow trail that may soon be a service road allowing heavy equipment and emergency vehicles access to a proposed cell tower, a family with a baby in a BabyBjörn carrier hikes past. She’s right. As the woods filter the late morning sunlight and the babbling brooks of the nearby Kensico River watershed drown out the traffic noise and the sounds of frolicking at the pool just a few hundred yards away, it really is easy to feel like not much has changed in the intervening centuries.

A growing group of historians, hikers, dog walkers, disc golf enthuisasts and park users aim to keep it that way.

It’s an odd quirk of sports history that has brought an unlikely ally to the table in opposition to plans to build a massive tower in an ecologically protected area of the park. A historic disc golf course designed by the man generally recognized as the father of modern disc golf, “Steady” Ed Headrick, happens to occupy the wooded acres where a new cell tower is planned.