Coming and Going

Today the mist that would lie in the basin of the park in Fall lay, instead, like a crystal glaze on the grass blades, leaves, sticks, gravel, rocks, hydrant, benches, seats, and curb. Everything. A pale white frosting lined the ginko leaves like salt on a marguarita glass. The sun lay in long slants across the yellow grass through the tree trunks, making pale shades of rainbow blue, green, orange and mauve out of the field of ice crystals.

Six geese had landed on the only watery looking spot left out just off the center of the park. They stood in line, probably the force of habit, always looking at the quarter profile of their friends. Always from behind. The skies around Lubbock in January fill up with long lines of these geese as they meander around, never clearly southbound, northbound of whatever. Playa hopping and fattening up.

A dog led a person into the park and played kick the ball. The person kicked and the dog chased, caught, shook, and returned. You could tell the dog really liked this game. It would crouch when the person got ready to kick...and then pounce on the ball like a third baseman, stoping it dead in flight. Pinning it to the ground and then trotting back with it to the kicker. I heard her say "Yeah!" to encourage her friend.

I'd never met this playful couple on the park before. It's January and I always see new faces, joggers, pets at the park as a new semester starts. Some stay and show up regularly, most go, their coming over, their going now the only thing to come.

The dog soon found the geese and the ballgame became less interesting. By the time I'd gotten around to the south side of the park I could hear the geese honking as they lifted off the grass. They flew over me so close I could hear the soft whoosh of the wind in their feathers and their grousing murmurs to one another. "Who invited invited invited the dog?" "Let's go go go." I could almost feel their weight soaring under their huge dark wings. I hadn't seen their arrival, but did catch their most satisfactory leaving.

Found

Today the cold wind chased me around the park. On the south-ward stretch I found a dollar bill glued with frost to the leaves in the concrete gutter.

I find things in the park whether I'm looking or not. Sometimes I run and let my eyesight drag in the leavy gutter of the road. Looking for what? I found a red ball and stuck it into two fingers of twig on a leafless tree. If the tree pitched the ball, maybe jerking in a suddent wind and letting the ball fly, it might have been a curve. It stayed in the tree for a couple of weeks, then vanished. Flung by the tree maybe, or found and plucked out by somebody who needed something to amuse a dog with.

I had put a pair of glasses I found in the same tree, sort of perched on a branch looking toward the intersection of 23rd and Flint Avenue. That corner of the park, where the oval garden offers something interesting to look at. The tree itself looking more clearly at approaching dog walkers or passing joggers. The tree watching me, its benefactor in eyeware, jogging past, forgetting I had slipped on the specs. They too vanished at some point.

The park lacks a formal "lost and found" but keys and other odd lost items show up on the little ledge at the bottom of the Park Rules sign. The sign consists of rough, redwood posts bolted together in rugged sturdiness. There I found a sign for lost puppies, and, over the years, have seen lost keys left there. Lost keys don't have any real value. You'd think someone would say, "Hey, I can go steal this guy's car!" But they don't. Who would want to steal a car anyway, and which car to steal? Questions, questions.

I do keep some things I found. I kept the dollar bill and it now drifts around in the clutter of my desk. Dog sticks and slobery tennis balls I do not keep. Other items you "find" don't really count: lunch leavings, cigarette butts, leaves, napkins, condoms, half chewed acorns, empty water bottles, coffee cups, styrofoam drink cups with straws, golf balls, feathers. Interesting feathers, leaves, drift wood, and so on I might keep while I'm walking, and then toss just before I leave the park. No sense in moving them, really. For every natural trinket I leave behind I'll find another one.

But I always look and I always find. The park offers everyone such a great opportunity to lose something. It's openness, the sense of "Ahhh...now I can let go!" It exacts a price. You hurry out into it, ready to play, you daydream in your car parked along the track, you marvel at your pet at full tilt after some ball you threw, you pull off your sweater or jacket and hurry to throw or catch. All these exciting moments of casting off, of dropping of cares leave their evidence for finders like me. I always look and I always find.

Wordless

Today, Sunday, I had the park pretty much to myself. The houses on my street as I walked to the park showed no lights except those faint, silent, inner room lights on, maybe night lights, but no bright rooms. I crossed Flint, quiet and deserted. I listened to the crunch of gravel on the track, the sparkle of frost on the leaves and pale yellow grass.

The temperature hovered somewhere in the 30s, about zero on the centigrade scale. To me it felt just cold. The breath of cold wind, the silent trees, the open swale, the hovering blue sky. Could I tell this cold from other colds? How frozen my thumbs felt; how numb my ears got. Yes, I could. Just like I can feel my joints and muscles and lungs. But I don't have words for them, or degrees, or images. Other pain, stiffness, shortness I can remember and so this day unfolds as yet another wordless day of feeling.

I did see one runner, a tall woman with white ear buds and a burgandy cotton shirt, dark pants and very needed ear warmers. I hadn't seen her before and I ignored her for the first round. She ran clockwise to my counterclockwise. The second time we passed I gave her a hand howdy and she said, "Hi." You never know about people. I make up my own stories about them. This one took time away from studies on a Sunday morning, or left someone sleeping, or acted on a resolution, or went out exploring, or needed some time alone, or fled in terror, or wanted to be seen in a stylish burgandy shirt. You never know. They approach and they leave without saying anything.

I do all the saying. And always to myself, but now with these words. "She's running too hard." "She likes the sun on her face." "She wouldn't fit in a small car." Whatever. The word stream starts, shaping the otherwise silent, unknown world of the park. The trees themselves--the large pecan grove, the willows, the firs, the elms, the honey locusts--all without labels except for what I provide. The bermuda, the crawling weeds, wet soughs, dips, vales, berms: all there for me to weave and name. Tick grass, goose weed, toad swamp, ant trough, sun slab, buffalo hump. The partial nature of nature: there but off to itself, quiet and wordless.

So what brings us all out to this park? Health, vanity, love, obsession? I have it to myself, even though I share it with others, this other runner in burgandy, here, okay, because she's house hunting and trying out the recreational possibilities of this neighborhood. I'd call that obsession.

Directions

Today, north wind bit into my face and hands. I face it on Flint Avenue, it follows me, waiting, on the opposite side. Then it gets another chance when I come back around. I only go one direction on the track. You can really only go one way, and that's around. I always go counterclockwise, for some reason. It feels natural. If I ran faster I'd probably lean in on the curves, like a bike rider. I'm used to park on the left, street on the right.

Most people go my direction. Some don't. The dog guy with coffee cup goes counter. He ambles with his four-legged pal on the inside of the park, not on the track. He's in no hurry, walking with his amiable dog. The dog woman with blue hat also goes counter, park on right, street on left. She and her dog also stay inside the track, too. No coffee cup. They'll never meet, these two singles. Unless one slows down and they're both pretty pokey. They have a lot in common. I'll have to look next time to see just how much they do share. Some things I know for certain, though:

• like medium, dark haired dogs
• take time to walk the dog
• amble
• wear dark clothing
• say "Hi" or raise a chin and smile when you pass
• like the park
• don't jog
• like early mornings
• like going counterclockwise

You can build a relationship on this basis, I think. The even look sort of alike, except one likes to walk and sip a cup of something warm in a cup. I'm only assuming it's coffee. Maybe they'll meet and share dog stories and so on. I'll see them walking together for a while.

I jogged with a friend for a brief while. We syncronized our running once, just by chance I guess. Wow! It felt like playing in a band. What a groove. It didn't last, again, just like a band. Now I try to synchronize with myself: breathing, arms, muscles. One man band, I guess.

I've met others on my counterclockwise path. Some I catch up to, some fall behind, some overtake me, some I overtake. I always see people, they honk, wave, holler, or not. Probably more not than do. Mostly, especially in the mornings, cold and bitten, I follow my own direction: west, south, east, north and so again. Leaning into my own little map, sharing with myself.

Sleepers

Today the warm November air filled my lungs with wind fuel. Easy energy, not the kind you have to work for. I sometimes think I use too much muscle power gasping and drawing. Where's the balance between what it takes to get the air in and what you really need? I try to rest on the fly, put my non-running muscles to sleep as best I can. Loosen my hands and relax my face. Of course, a good workout for the hands and face must count for something. Any burn will do I guess.

The park gives burn and rest. It claws at my lungs and lulls them too. It offers a good resting place. Sleepers, campers, travelers, animal and human, use the park to stop off. Two days ago I lopped past a couple with asleep in their car. Their seats back like open cell phones, no blankets, windows cracked not moving. Conked where they landed. The park a rest stop with no facilities. I've seen others at the park. Sleeping bags out under the trees. Two or three undefined and tired ones. Finding a place, overcome with fatigue, dropped and dozed on the soft grass. The trees whispering above, the houses along the side silent watchers, their own eyes closed for the night. A mighty camper bus parked near one of the barrier-non-barriers, just room for it and the little matching Jeep it pulled. The generator hummed softly somewhere inside, a steady snoring. Blinds drawn.

I see nappers galore at the park. It's a nap magnet. They stop, munch, smoke, read, listen, and doze. A universal waiting room for something, for people with little to wait for. But waiters nevertheless. Geese snoozing with their beaks bent over like soda straws, exhausted, waiting for light. Cats with eyes half open catching the morning sun on the bricks.

I pass by with my quiet tread, not stopping, barely sneaking a look, respectful of their bedrooms. On my way where they have had to stop, wait, sleep, get another gasp of muscle energy, put a dark bar of shut-eye between them and the distraction of going. Soon they'll stir, shudder, stretch like cats on a brick wall, look out over the basin of the park, and turn the key again.

Fog

Today the park held a six-foot deep lake of fog, white and soft and glowing. The sun, rising in the east among the trees dipped oars of light into the pond of fog. I saw the sun glowing in the mist from 2 blocks away, starting my walk to the park. When I got there the shadows lay long across the grass like journey markers; my own shadow across the street with the sun over my shoulder. It rippled and flapped like a skinny black flag, slinking along the curb and fence, no sound but a trace of my passing.

This fog belonged to the park. It's moist, golden grass and soil had given it up like warm breath to the cool air. The slopes held it, a valley fog in a small valley. It had grown during the night, white and silent under the windless stars. It waited for the morning, pale, moonlit, quiet.

Come the sun, the fog, lit up, like a white rainbow with blue and orange tints. Once or twice I stopped just to watch the quivering fog shadows of the trees against the mist, dark and long and the glow around the trunks. I felt tall and bouyant, like a ship. No wind stirred the leaves or moved the fog, and it lay there, warming, thinning, as I went around the track. A swell of air pushed some fog up over the track on the south, shaded side. Fog spilled like the pillow a sleeper would push almost off the bed. Sneaking off into the dark.

After one jogging lap I walked a lap, enjoying being surrounded by the humid light, glistening leaves of trees, dark orange, deep brown and green, the sky clear and pale. I passed an earnest couple with smiles on their faces, walking in that animated walk/run that people do. Paths crossing. Still, I couldn't take my eyes off the still, floating white vapor that lay in the park, and that I surrounded. Looking across it to the west I saw a broad band of white, then green and russet, then blue with the moon, sharp and white hanging in the sky.

I couldn't wait to cut across, walk through it, breath it, and taste it. Heading east, with the sun off to the right, I dipped into the quiet mist, surrounded by light, ready to loose my way in the fog. It felt cool on my legs. At the other side, when I came out, I looked back to see if I had left a path. No path. No trace. The sun helping me out by melting the air, warming and evaporating. I turned my back on it before it disappeared.

The Lake

Today the sun got up early. It's "fall back" time, so the sun, ahead of the game, beat me to the park, up and shining in the cold morning air. A bus had started stopping at this corner, where you used to could drive around the part but now can't because of the non-barrier barrier right there. But the old-fashioned carriage bus, that the city brought out of mothballs and uses now for a shuttle, stops here on its shuttle circle. A couple approached tentatively. Does the bus stop here? Hard to tell with no bench of pole, just a slab of concrete.

I'm using a new routine, for a while at least. Instead of all the way around twice, once at a jog and once at a walk, I cut back across, halfway through the second round. I light out for the territories. Cut across the wonderful open, the world receeding, breathing, across the wide open swale. Heading for the opposite corner.

I can do this because they cut off the spinklers in winter that always seemed to go off in the early morning. Now, the grass grows longer, thicker, with less mown chaff on top to gather on my socks and shoes. I walk on dry, soft, thick grass. I preferred the mowed but unfertilized ground of the old days, before the sprinkler system, because it had more variety of weeds and gave a firmer footing and harder edges to the rises. This new, softer grass smooths the gently undulating terrain, with its sloughs and dips and dents.

The park sinks in the middle, about six feet, like an enormous shallow serving bowl with broad sides that flatten, bear the trees, the whole thing lined with the necklass of the jogging track. I often think it could fill with water, like a playa lake. West Texas has tons of playa lakes. Sometimes when you take off in a jet in the early morning and look to the east over the great Caprock escarpment, you see them spread like jewels into the horrizon. Hundreds of them, shallow and round, recharging the massive Ogalala aquifer, hidden far below. They capture and hold the rain, dripping it down through the limestone, seeping in the dark to the underground lake of pure splash and depth. The shallow lakes bring cranes, geese, ducks, coots and harbor bass, catfish, salamanders, waterdogs, and newts.

Our city has a dozen or so playas that the fish and game stocks with rainbow trout in winter. A put and take fishery. The park doesn't hold water though. Sometimes it tries, after a hard rain, to get a glisten of water out there in the soggiest part. Maybe fool some tired geese. But it seeps away, evaporates, only held by some tougher water plants and cruised by enormous black dragon flies, almost big as bats, out in the sour, hot, wet marsh, that itself will soon dry and harden and crumble.

Today I walked, cut across, through what would have been the lake on the park. I watched the margins of the park as I dropped down the shallow slope, the imaginary water swirling around my legs getting slowly deeper, the grass waving around my feet getting dimmer in the dark, decay stained water. Out in the middle, the water around my neck, I could only feel the bottom, still warm from yesterday's sun, the water slowing my progress, lifting me so I almost swam or floated from one bounce of foot to the other. My head at the level of the jogging track, I passed sloughs and dips in the terrain, places that would hold fish. I looked for the edges and soft rises where minnows would congregate, line up side to side and tail to tail, a mass surging as one. Then I rose again with the slope, up toward the rock-lined garden in the corner where I would emerge, dripping, almost dry by the time I could lift my foot, wet with black and yellow chunks of debris, gobs of stinky mud, broken acorn shells, leaves, bark fragments, strands of grass and lost feathers.

Back on dry land again right where the water would end, a drifting of grass clippings making a ring and depositing a last batch of debris on my sagging socks. I left imaginary wet, dripping tracks crossing the street and onto the sidewalk, the tracks getting fainter as the sun warmed the concrete and I headed home.

Panhandle Playa Lakes