The Park

Coming and Going

2010-01-05T06:27:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-06T11:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-06T11:09:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-16T06:54:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-13T06:20:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-03T05:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

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

The Slanty Tree

2009-10-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

This morning the sun took its time soaking into the park. By the time I'd made one round it still hadn't penetrated or done much good. Not like the sun with a canopy of clouds to shine through or a little mist to catch it, spread it, bring a glow to the grass and trees. No crystals, droplets, vapors, fogs, to invite the sun.

By the time I got around to the third side the sun still struggled to slant its rays down to the grass, pale green with hoar frost. I looked for the slanty tree today but I only saw a stretching of moist, mown lawn. It was gone. The scrawny, short, tree that never grew up but bent north like the post on a sundial, served as a disc golf target for me and my older son for so many years. It had a gnarled root, round like an elephant's foot that we would aim for. Or you could throw at the trunk itself, it didn't matter. The slanty tree, always inviting, didn't mind. It stood apart from the other, larger, more rooted trees, a perfect target because it bordered the open ground. Park people tended to stay up on the uplifted edge of the green, near the trees, so discs sailing the slanty tree didn't endanger them. It wobbled there proudly, out on its own, its few branches coming off its top like sticks balanced on a crooked finger. Few leaves, really. Its glory was its inviting, bulbous root, touched by round golf discs that bounced near it, tapped it and lay there like orbs around its base. We would walk up, pick up our discs, give the trunk a tap (if you didn't actually nail it on your putt), and step away, looking long to the east across "the harmonica", the next challenge, a real disc eater.

Now, a target, landmark, exemplar of stubborn non-growth for so long, the tree must have caught its last attention: the tree guys. Hey fellas, over here! Trimmers, thinners, loppers, choppers, hackers, wackers. Recently I'd seen it, still there, and wondered when its time would come. It came.

I walked out to the spot, easy to find if I didn't look for it but aimed by the trees and sky. It called to me. They left a 2 or so foot wide, irregular patch of dirt, a few chunks of bark skattered around, not even a stump. I guess the stump came up pretty easily; it never looked like it had much in the way of roots. Now the circles where the mowers spun around it for years, rings of grass dents, still marked it, dark in the center, a bulls eye to the very last. It didn't have a trunk, really, more like a big stick poked into the ground, a pin that the south wind, weakest of all around here, could set north.

It never amounted to much. No taller than 10 or so feet. I picked up a piece of the bark, about six inches long, with a curve that looked like the curve of the trunk. Now it's sitting on my desk and I'll toss it into some junk box. It will invite a memory or two over the years. I'll tell John about it. He'll know what we're missing.

Light

2009-10-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

Today the sun lit the filmy morning clouds. The air had a soft, bright glow. The wind at my back as I started on the gravel. It's close to Halloween and today I jogged with ghosts. All the ones that came back to inhabit my imagination again. A man running, posessed in the ghostly glow.

The light will last about a half an hour, before the clouds drain of their pink. The air warms and shrinks and shadows darken as the sun climbs over the trees. Cars, bikes, busses. But before that, in the quiet of the morning, I run through this glowing light. Painters like a light like this, and I think this light brought so many of them to southern France. There you find light you don't find elsewhere, and it made its way into painting after painting.

I've tried making this kind of light in my yard by tacking up white plastic along the dark fence. I keep hoping it will help my garden. It does make you want to dance or spin around in the back yard. The park grass likes the glow and shines a brilliant green. I pass a woman in a red jacket with the hood up, small and steady in her gait. I've never seen her before. Later, walking, she passed me, same gait, eyes forward.

The glow has faded, but the sun hasn't come all the way up. This time a month ago I had it in the face by now, especially on the east-bound laps. By winter I'll face the dawn at this hour.

Wrecks

2009-10-26T06:27:00.000-07:00

Today I saw a sleeper on the west side of the park. A red bundle in the front seat of a grey pickup. Park and snooze. On my walk lap from the other side I watched the sleeper start up, eyes open, lights on, back up and head out the way it must have came in. West to who knows where. This is the parking, isolated part of the park. Lovers meeting, lunches dropped out the window, the occasional condom or tampon, one dropped out before the other after, I suppose.

You see a lot of cars and trucks at the park. Joggers and dog walkers parked, waiters, phone talkers now. Usually people park and walk to the university. They park and love, visit, eat. Then there are people who wreck and park, walk away with wounds. Wrecks usually happen at two places: the concrete overburden slab over the culverts where streets dead-end at the jogging track. Here street ends and park starts. If you don't stop you're in the park before you know it. But not before a barrier-non-barrier lets you know. A bridge for joggers like me; a front end masher for cars and truck drivers not quite paying enough attention. Not from here.

Most happen at night, as you would imagine, next day only marks, white chips, paint scrapings, yellow and white glass: evidence in the concrete. It gets you right at about the middle of your front tire, bottom of your bumper, about where the steering rods attach, if you're not in the air by then. Today I loped over about a 4-inch tire scrape across the concrete. Just as deep and dark and scarry as you could imagine. Looked like a car, the concrete edge chipped away clean and white where it smacked. and then the ground the park torn, ripped up, dug into about 30 feet in the grass. The car gone now but its evidence left there, a chunk of grass pulled up and dropped that has taken, now, a week or so to wash away. Probably when you think about the trauma of that person's jolt, that whack into the park, the sudden running out of street, it will take a lot longer for that memory to wash away than it will what happened when this wheel and bumper and undercarriage dragged across the concrete. It will be gone in a few months.

I remember another wreck a few years ago on the other side, the southbound on Hanover. I saw the truck parkedn on the opposite side of the street, one tire missing, just the rim there and it scraped and muddy from rolling and digging. I backtracked the scrape across the street, to where it hit and had been driven out of the park, back across the road, limping, parked across the street and left in the cold, wee hours. Let's come back later. Okay. The big pickup painted in camoflage, stood out on the street. It had hit the concrete non-barrier barrier, flown I think, because you could see other dark tire marks a good 15 feet in where it landed. They must have been really flying. until they flew. And then down into the park along the drainage sluice, one tire still uselessly braking. Then a lot of churning up, a lot of muddy turning, backing, up a lot of indecision, eyes straining, tires spinning, trembling hands, of let's get out of here, of holy shit stuff going on in there, and then finally, they could limp out, the truck finaly bouncing and slamming off the curb back on the street, its off road adventure at an end across the street parked and then off on foot, picked up, who knows. Come back and get it the next day.

This on a Sunday morning. I enjoyed reconstructing the event. I thought to call the city, but figured it would get called soon enough. The sleeper today had parked carefully, out of the traffic, and left quitetly, having to turn twice to check out of the park motel.

First Geese

2009-10-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

Today a rose-colored blush floated in the west under the pale blue, cloudless morning sky as I started along the north track. Out in the center, to the west side of the green swale gathered a flock of Canadian geese, about 20 of them, the first of the season.

I had heard them before I saw them. If you live in West Texas you learn to identify the calls, like the squeak of a gate hinge in the sky. From near and far you can hear their honking, random and raucous, something they can never get as organized as their flying. Sounds never in synch. This morning, on the way to the park along the north sidewalk of the street, I heard, through the trees to the southeast, the calls, close and loud and so unmistakable that I could turn in the direction and wait. Then they burst over the dark leaves of the trees, right over head, then turning west. I turned with them happily and watched them reorganize their V, disturbed by the turn, and make for the park.

I got there after they did and saw them again as I strode the north leg of the track, losely gathered, pecking, indistinct against the grass. They must have seen the open park and took it as a breather, not a real stop. Maybe some bugs; no water.

I didn't see them very well, tending to watch the track come at me. Focused. I hit a stride today. Legs, arms, breathing, head all working together at a constant, sustainable rate. The feeling of riding my body rather than being inside pushing it. I relaxed, and let it carry me.

The geese must hit a stride too, wings, neck, breathing, feet dragging in the wind. Eyes front, the wind hissing rythmically along the ears. And for the geese, the locking of stride to stride, a little off the wing of the one in front, catching puffs of air and pushing them along to the next in the V, or in the case of the last, letting the last of the used clump of air expand and equalize and drift off, no longer goose compressed.

I feel this stride, a little of it, this morning, quiet puffs of gravel and dust sounding from my shoes. Leader and last in my V. The geese didn't look winded: a sign, I think of a real stride, that it's almost stopping or resting. It allows a stop and an effortless restart.

And so they left the green for some dark wet water they imagined just ahead. Honking, wings digging in, they lifted off as I turned away from the track this morning. The air had lightened and the western rose drained into the higher sky blue, darkening it as the sun touched my shoulders.

Park Rules

2009-10-23T05:38:00.000-07:00

Today a long fibrous cloud trailed aslant across the western sky like a piece of pink cotton candy. It watched me cross in the early morning light using my new rule of avoiding intersections. When I can see lights on cars, I make myself walk twenty or so feet from the intersection. Then I cross, always, always facing the oncoming lights. No guarantees, though. The face can only face in one direction at a time. The ears have to make up for the other two hundred or so degrees.

The twenty-foot rule is a month or so old. Other rules took years to establish and, through obedience, have lasted. First-foot rule: start running as soon as the first foot hits gravel. The crunch triggers the run. This rule governs stopping too: only stop when the foot hits gravel again on the other side of a concrete drainage culvert (the track has four of these, plus four sidewalk access slabs). These slabs and culverts mark sections for stopping and starting.

And so on. Never walk past anyone; always jog past. Never jog or walk clockwise. It's always: west, south, east, north. Some go counter to this, and I always give them a nod when first passing, then I can ignore them. I follow them as a kind of ownership of my trips, running and walking the pea gravel. My park, my jog, my rules.

Of course, the park has its own rules. No bikes on the track. This gets disobeyed regularly because kids can't resist hoping up on the track on their way somewhere else. The park does not attract kids: no climbing structures, padded surface, swings, tables and benches for parents and sitters, no pavilions, courts, or diamonds. Just a broad stretch of open green that attracts adults: owners, fliers, throwers, watchers, sun bathers. Nothing of bright plastic or metal to attract young eyes and muscles.

Two redwood poster boards display the park rules. No alcohol, no weapons, no driving, no bikes and so on. No golfing: a rule that gets broken often by young men who just can't resist the broad, open parade ground in the middle, it's look all that of a course, only lacking a dab of smooth manicured green on the far end with it's irresistable little black cup. Scofflaws, they get out there to drive and pitch. Crossing the open, I frequently find lost balls. I golf out there, but with disks, and not any more. My shoulder gave out from too much whipping around. The driving, aiming for trash cans and tree trunks did it in. I miss catching the southwest wind, so dependable and uplifting.

Besides it says, "No golfing" on the rule board. Well, on one of the boards. The other one is partially covered up by a piece of cardboard duct-taped on. It reads: "Found (underlined) Two brown and white puppies (puppies underlined)." And a phone number. The signage covers the lower 6 or so rules. Next to it there's a car key somebody found and left on the redwood ledge. All three waiting for their owner to wander over to the sign, looking for a rule to follow, and finding. "Hey. Look honey! Here's our puppies!!" Or, "Here's my key. Dang, now I have two of them."

Happy Birthday Park

2009-10-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

Today rain filled the track. It dripped from the trees and filled the concrete strip of curb. I dropped in and out of the track, avoiding the mud and the flying gravel. This dark October day the park gets ready for its birthday by taking a drizzle bath.

On the 28th of this month all the old friends of the park will come back. The tall cowboy, walking, at last, for his health, and his encouraging but sullen daughter will come back. His boots dusty and wobbly on the track. The tilt-head runner, lover of asphalt, will pass me yet again. My best friend, who looked bigger than I had thought from behind, will be there, smiling as I pass him. He didn't jog regularly and stayed big. The brown lost dog who growled and snarled at me, and his timid friend will come back. He will grin like a dog and NOT BITE! All the stray, lost dogs will come back with happy wishes.

The moms will all come back, jogging off their pregnancy pounds with their babies in their three-wheelers. The mowers will gather, the sprayers, the waterers, the trenchers, the smoothers, the trimmers under the soaring hawks, their offspring back to the nests. They will shriek and dart into the tall trees.

The saggy drug dealer and his mis-matched, college student clients out in the middle of the park, a cloud of blue candle smoke hovering over them, will pass cake and ice cream and smile broadly. Lost Dog Woman and Lost Dog Driver will tear off their anxious masks as their dog shows up, playing with his friends, ears flopping, reunited at last. The fashion show woman, tall and graceful, will stride and pivot on the concrete drainage slab that justs out into the park. Her imaginary admirers along the runway will clap and flash bright camera lights.

The woman I bonked on the head with the golf disk will come back and forgive me. All the disk and frisbe throwers and catchers will fill the broad green to sing the song. My old friend now in New York will come back and jog with me, stride by stride, and we will open a present under the elm tree. All the walkers will come back, the gardeners, sun bathers, kite flyers will come back. My daughter, running with me, and my son, loping ahead of me. They will come back.

Two Ladies

2009-10-19T06:23:00.000-07:00

Often I see two people walking or jogging together. These two ladies make quite a pair. One of them has a butt so big it takes over her T-shirt tail. It bunches up over her and creases at the waist. Her shirt makes a jostling white laundry load as she walks. Her friend does the power walk, arms up, elbows working, heals and toes. Her butt says determination. They talk incessantly and wave their hands around. Laundry Load talks more and isn't really listening to her radio.

I leave the path when I pass them. Like other couples, I don't see their faces, just their rears. Sometimes they go single file when they hear you behind them. I have a little kick in the dirt that signals my approach, if I use it. This day I didn't with this pair. I hop off the track and feel the solid, black pavement under my shoes while I overtake. This zone belongs, in my memory, to the outside jogger. A silent, radio-free tall man in his 50s easily whom I used to see. He never jogged in the track. Always outside it on the pavement. He tilted his head as he went and never looked up. I tried it, thinking he did it to over come the hammer of the pavement on his feet. Like a wince.

I guess people have things they do for pain. I used to feel it more in the afternoons in the hot sun at about the second turn. Real desparation all over your body as you trudge and hope for a second wind. Breathing can help. I take a really deep, two-stride long one and my oxygen levels fill back up. It pulls me in. The body has ways of adjusting. I tried the head tilt too and it worked. When I hop into the outside jogger path I do the head tilt for this fellow.

This day there's only one lady, Bunchy Shirt lady. "Where's your friend," I wonder. But I don't ask, of course. There's nobody there where her friend was. She has her radio plugged in and listens now. I stay in the path, to her left, as I pass. For just an instant I'm in her friend spot. Then I'm gone and she can watch me head off. She was singing along to the radio.

Dogs

2009-10-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, today, I only saw two dogs. The more behaved one first chased a squirrel over the grass but then sat still while it got its leash put on or maybe back on. The next dog, a white wolf hound, had just rounded the courner. The owner obeyed the leash law in force in the park, and re-connected her dog. Not that the second dog didn't behave, but the first one amazed me by sitting still, ears up, while it got re-leashed. Some dog.

Dogs do get special attention at the park. They put up a sign above the doggie bag dispenser that pretends to talk in dog language to dogs. The sign encourages you to pick up after your dog. And most people do. You see them with their dogs and doggie bags of poop. When they don't and the dogs crap in the middle of the track I usually will stop and kick it over with gravel and dust and then kick it into the street. Eventually dog crap disappears. Maybe another dog comes along and eats it. I don't know.

Parts of the trail show dogs prints more clearly than other parts. Where the water puddles on the track you find dog prints that can last for days, or before the next rain. Today the guy with the white dog decided to cut across the park. When he and his dog emerged from the grass they crossed the concrete bridge that covers the drainage ditch. Their prints showed wet on the concrete, paw and shoe, where they came out of the grass. They headed east and I passed them heading west. I know the impulse to cut across the middle of the park. Sometimes, when the sprinklers are quitet, I do it too. I like to feel the street and track recede, the uneven tufts of grass, mud, sticks under my feet. Out in the middle you're isolated and it gets quieter. You've got space all around you. I love that feeling.

Whenever I'm by myself away from home, like at a hotel or visiting someone, I do my jump. If I'm taking a bath or changing clothes, just at the point when I'm naked, I'll do a little jump. Just enough to get my feet off the floor or the carpet. Sometimes I try taking the tiniest jump I can. But even though it's the tiniest jump, I know that I've separated myself from everything. Totally "just me". Then I land again and can put on my pajamas or whatever. I started doing this as a little kid and I still do it. If I'm in a new place it's a way of reconnecting with myself.

Walking across the park you get the same feeling: being yourself by not being in the middle of everything. When you come out you have grass clippings on your shoes and socks and, in the wet grass, you leave prints on the concrete for a while. Then they fade as you walk along the sidewalk, back home.