Seeing, and Doubly Appreciated

Seeing, and Doubly Appreciated

I have walked the small fields, gravel paths, and monuments of wood, concrete, and metal so many times that I feel as though I should have memorized them all by now. Yet, nature, akin to man, is ever-changing. No matter how many precious moments, grand events, or meaningful silent conversations one may have with another, one can never be fully known or memorized; not even by oneself. Shadow-laden mud bogs, created after the rain but remaining for days longer than you’d expect. This park is full of mysticism. Over the five years I have lived here, I have come to know the park (the Land as my friends and I sometimes refer to it) intimately, and think of it often. We walked along the lava (the pedestrian/bike path), and all felt the need to return to the grass and the earth. The tree we came upon as an interested group seemed to be a cathedral made of stained glass made of soft wood, as I looked up at its spiritual antiquity. Wishing I had taken off my shoes, I climbed up the beautiful and primeval tree, holding its shaking branches (no possibility of them breaking crossing my mind) and longed to walk it like a tightrope; (looking down from a height seems more daunting than looking upward at its mighty stature.) The bark was cut into pieces, attached together, as though it were a carefully placed mosaic. The small separations between them were jagged, but the bark itself was soft. A small pool of water was wedged between a coming together of parts of the tree, and two lizards were bathing in it, or drinking in it. They seemed unbothered by my presence. If Black Widows really do possess a blindingly red and metallic diamond on their back, then one was lingering less than a foot away from me in her delicate web. I proceeded cautiously, rapidly, and flew down to the ground. The squirrels seemed to have multiplied since my last visit. (“It has been so long since I have been here…”) A silent man walking by was rummaging around in a pocket of his running shorts with such concentration that he may have been walking on auto-pilot. He withdrew his hand, empty, and looked down at it with a satisfied smile, as though he had found what he was searching for. He held up his head and calmly continued walking on the path, gradually veering off to the grass. I visited the park on Sunday, again, because I was inspired again to return to the place which I considered a second home and an escape from college so many years ago. I went with a friend who, like me, tirelessly strives to notice everything. The purple and black flowers we saw near the ‘turtles’ fountain’ stuck out against the bigger pink and orange blooms. We walked on dirt paths curving around the right side of the park, far away from the gazebos and the pavement; next to the houses on the border. The thick black mud had footprints of animals past, cleat-marks of accomplished runners, and milk-chocolate colored twigs sticking quite vertically out of this ground at certain places. The sky slowly began to turn grey that day, signaling the oncoming sunset. Walking through a gathering of at least twenty people, green parrots in the trees above them, squirrels creeping towards the food they were cooking, we came up the darkening orange sun peering through the silhouetted trees. Gnarled. The pink highlights which soon appeared lower in the sky were Sharpie marks, thrashing through the otherwise gentle scene. We threw red wine on each other, I lost my wallet, I laughingly threatened her with a corona beer bottle, we came upon a man who could back-flip into a handstand, and we laughed and wrestled each other to the ground. To become one with nature, one must laugh and join its wild nature (no pun intended). To breathe it in; to drink it in.