Walking Tour of Audubon Park

The day of the Audubon Park walking tour wasn’t the most beautiful day, it had been somewhat rainy and the air was damp with humidity, not exactly the weather I had been hoping for going into this assignment. I was walking to the park thinking about the multiple times I’ve been there when its nice and wasn’t exactly inclined to walk around just waiting for the skies to open up. But after I got there and began my walk the park seemed more peaceful on that day then it usually does when I’m there. The times I spend at the park are usually on bright sunny days kicking a soccer ball around or going on a run with my room mate, but last Wednesday while I was there without all the distractions I really got a better sense of what the romantics were inspired by. In the quiet park I noticed things I’ve never noticed before, I felt things I’ve never experienced there before. Instead of focusing on myself like I usually am at the park—having fun with friends or running that last sprint—but this time, my senses were on everything surrounding me, making me feel as if I could sit and think about what innocence is for hours. In the time we were at the park I was able to reject thinking about classes and work that I had to go to later, I could just reflect on what I was seeing. One of the things I noticed while sitting on a bench was the way the ducks swam around in the algae. The algae was so thick you couldn’t see the water but as the ducks swam through they left no trail behind them, I would have thought that they would have left swirls around the water, trails of where they’d been, but after watching it was so clear how nature just is, the algae just let the ducks pass without changing. The way nature can just be without complications reminded me of Wordsworth and how we complicate our lives by just being man, but nature just is by just being nature. The thoughts took me back to Wordsworth’s Lines Written in Early Spring, especially the line, “In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts/ Bring sad thoughts to mind.” When I first read that line I didn’t exactly relate, I simply was thinking how when I’m happy I’m happy, but after spending time in the park reflecting I could see how frustrating it is to live in our world of chaos when you connect to nature the way Wordsworth does.