Essays

  You may find yourself, at one point or another, in a strange place; full of sights and sounds unseen in your everyday life. It is a place just beyond your home, beyond your work, beyond your normal boundaries. You are traveling through what feels like the summit of another dimension; another time and place. No, you are not entering some twilight zone of the imagination. This place you are traveling to is quite real; and all the same, unreal. It is a wondrous place, masked in shadows cast by vast mountains and superstitions that boggle the mind and enrich the spirit. It is a reservation of nature herself, preserved rather perversely by man, surrounded by his monuments to self-reverence. It is an enigma encapsulated in nearly unseen cages; hidden away on the outskirts of our minds, our bodies, and our reach. But mankind does not hide things alone. There is a whole world of the hidden in nature itself, with stories untold and histories unlearned. 

   And what does nature have to hide? Why, man’s influence, of course. You may not see it at first but the paths of dirt are not beaten by nature; nor are stone markers lain by nature to guide you into her virgin wilderness; nor too are chain link fences and steel piped water founts a natural occurrence in any landscape outside the confines of our city life. No. This place is an urban park; designed with man’s intentions in mind. Carved into our cityscape is a place supposedly untouched by people, but in reality may be the most perverted place man has created. A paradise of nature for you to enter, where you may wander endlessly to your heart’s content – Monday’s through Friday’s, 7am to 7 pm; 6am on weekends.  In it, you will lose yourself in its trimmed beauty, tamed by caretakers and custodians alike. And should you truly become lost, electric lit paths guide the weary traveler back from nature to the safety of your kin. And all of it for your benefit, masterfully controlled—or perhaps, contained is a better word.

   Sign posts scattered throughout act as history markers, telling stories of nature’s past exploits and biological tendencies. Warning notices for irritants such as poison oak warn you that nature can be both beautiful and harmful. However, in this contrived reality, poison oaks prove to be another planned component of this “natural” wonder, for it too is trimmed, treated, and controlled by those who would disguise this place as nature. You would be wise, however, to avoid it all the same as though it may be contrived, an irritant it is. Instead, you are encouraged to take a stroll along natures many paths and see what all lies hidden within. 

   There are plants of all variety here in nature and you are beset with them, surrounding you, entrapping you the way you entrapped them. Each of them seeking to reach out at you and pluck you like oh so many flowers they have seen plucked before them. Alas, they pluck not as their movements are dictated by the parallax of the sun—bending to its will the same way they bend to our own. Trees too litter throughout the boxlike valley containing “the nature” and you can see their many differing stages of life as you pass deeper into their realm. Some are young to your eyes, full of vigor and might. Some are well aged and give off an aura of wisdom that dwams you. Still others are so aged, they show their faults as knotty chunks lay strewn about a warped and shattered husk. Each of these brutish, beastly plants breathes new life into your imagination as you absorb the visions of their state and imbed their coarse shapes into your memories. 

   Having taken for granted the local scenery, you may choose now to be bold and traverse deeper into this contrived wilderness to see what else may lie below. If you do, you will see an act of resistance more audacious and patient than any conceived by man. A slow and steady act of violent opposition can be seen enacted all around you. Vines of wispy green daringly ensnare a fountain pipe which protrudes from the ground like a blistering sore. Its tendril grasp wrenches tirelessly at its galvanized cylindrical foe.  The pipe stands fast, unyielding; the vine’s struggle for reclamation never ending. A little ways up the path another displays their contempt for man’s hubris.  A boulder sits defiantly in the center of the beaten path. Its goal, to block your further intrusion. Its futile attempt to reclaim this land for nature will not go unnoticed. You stay enough to ponder its mass and to even feel its jagged edges and rippled surface before moving on. Further along, a yard appears; not of clean cut grass or a field of weeds and flowers, but a service yard, hidden far along the inside edge of the park.  Here the struggle has been lost for nature for some time as the constant shuffling of boots and tires along with mowers and lawn trimmers have made any part of the struggle unbearable for nature to endure.  

   Now some time has passed since you arrived and you may feel satisfied with your perverse interaction with nature’s ghost. Though it may be a shell of its former glory, you are grateful for it all the same. Not because it is here to bring you tidings of what was, but because it reminds you of the comforts you have gained by being civilized. Your arrogance fuels your being and you are left with a sense of entitlement. You are meant to control this land, to visit it whenever you like, and to take leave of it whenever you so desire. You return to your car and vacate the enclosed parkland, taking with you fond memories of hours gone past; your conquest now complete. You may return again someday and on that day you will seek out new paths to conquer. Many paths still lie in wait of your arrival, beaten and carved just for you.  And when you are ready to wander through nature’s contrived reality, it will be a time of your choosing – Monday’s through Friday’s, 7am to 7 pm; 6am on weekends.