A Walk In The Park

 

If not for the park located a few blocks from my house, I'm not so sure I'd even like living in my neighborhood much any longer. I don't have anything against my neighbors or even the current physical state of my house; I just no longer want to live in a city. I'm fairly convinced I was made for the country. I'm more sure each day as proof of city life presses in tighter and tighter. I can hear the city louder. I can see more of it every day. More streets, more cars, more houses, more apartments, more people, more sidewalks, more tidy front lawns, more track suit-wearing moms bebopping from one block to the next. More fences, more happy landscapes. More strip malls. More Wal-Marts and Best Buys and cell phones and headphones. I don't want to see them anymore. They're tired. I'm tired. We need a break from one another. But I'm stuck. Fixed. Situated. Immobile for now. A housing market that currently doesn't exist will define you that way. Except for the park down the street. Except for the walking path carved out about a half-mile round in the park down the street. Except for the walking path carved into the federally protected wetlands in the park down the street. Toward the east runs the Salt Creek where ducks and geese swim, beavers build dams, deer slide down the banks to drink, and farmers have built concrete runoffs. Nice. Toward the north and south run nothing but long grass, soggy bottoms, deer tracks, hints of rabbit paths, and geese and black birds too many to count. Well, the long grass runs free up until the Interstate reigns it back in toward the north and a car lot and civilization do the same toward the south. Toward the north lies said neighborhood. My walks around the park are always too short but always renewing. It's not difficult imagining Native Americans or pioneers crossing the land hundreds of years ago. Although minuscule, this area has been relatively untouched since then. The natural barriers, plant life, trees, wildlife . . . everything is orginal. Currently, this park is one of the few places I feel the same.