Frick park
Oct. 20th, 2001 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eubI walk down a valley, tilting my head up at the trees that spread in from the sides to hold a towering almond-shaped space, lit through leaves like green and gold stained glass.
A warm breeze shuffles the dry leaves and shakes some free of the trees. I catch one falling, and throw it back up in the air.
Down past the end of Tranquil Trail and off intro the scrub, the trail ends at a culvert trickling into a stream -- Nine Mile Run, I think. The culvert pours out chilly air, and is big enough, if you bend over, to walk into. I can see my breath in the slant of sunlight that reaches in. I step off the sunlight into shadow, but that's far enough. It's not that there's anything to be afraid of, I think, but the thing is that I don't care to meet anyone else in there.
A pair of mountain bikers coming downhill asks me if the stretch below will kill them. Maybe, I say. It's steep, and all covered with leaves. I look further up the hill. There's a steeper stretch down there, I tell them. One sights down the trail and says to the other, if you go off the trail, it's not like there are all that many trees.
Passing a ten-year-old-league soccer game, I embarrass myself and shame my junior-high soccer coach by flubbing a trap of a stray ball. It bounces under my foot and into the weeds; I fish it out and flip it back.
A family is playing baseball or Calvinball, parents versus kids, on a diamond of coats. One rule is that fielders don't throw the ball, they chase the runner down. The son veers away from his father ahead of him and escapes off into the field. His father chases him down, tackles him, and carries him to the ground. "No tickling," his sister calls. The rule seems to be that the father has to swing at any pitch within a step and a reach of the bat to either side of him. He connects, once, and hits one out of the park, dribbling uphill well towards the tree whose roots I'm sitting in. The daughter chases it down, trips and skins her knee, gets up, and runs it back in. Home run.
"Mom, if you run down with your eyes closed, it's really cool."
A young boy is playing frisbee with his parents. He catches, tries to catch, with his head thrown back and his arms spread wide; when it hits the ground he chases it along its spiral. The red frisbee is backlit and shines like a jewel. His mother's throw into a gust of wind goes wild and lands behind her. All three stand. You go get it, she motions, and he runs leaping and windmilling his arms.
A girl and her mother are watching her grandmother hang by her arms from a set of rings. "No, Amah, you can't touch the ground! You touched the ground with your feet. You can't touch the ground. Look, Amah. Let me."
A couple is sitting on a log; the boy is talking on his cellphone. His girlfriend looks at the backs of her hands, at her nails.
Several people are holding their dogs back from investigating a raccoon who is blundering through the brush, in broad daylight. Could be sick, rabid.
Near the end, I take a wrong turn. Where does this path go? When I had come, I'd walked just down Beechwood to a tiny meadow I'd always seen from the road and wondered if it was part of the park or just somebody's yard. I saw a path entrance, meant to walk around the edge to it, but found and took another little path, downhill into the park. Now my wrong turn leads me out into the meadow on the path I didn't take.
A warm breeze shuffles the dry leaves and shakes some free of the trees. I catch one falling, and throw it back up in the air.
Down past the end of Tranquil Trail and off intro the scrub, the trail ends at a culvert trickling into a stream -- Nine Mile Run, I think. The culvert pours out chilly air, and is big enough, if you bend over, to walk into. I can see my breath in the slant of sunlight that reaches in. I step off the sunlight into shadow, but that's far enough. It's not that there's anything to be afraid of, I think, but the thing is that I don't care to meet anyone else in there.
A pair of mountain bikers coming downhill asks me if the stretch below will kill them. Maybe, I say. It's steep, and all covered with leaves. I look further up the hill. There's a steeper stretch down there, I tell them. One sights down the trail and says to the other, if you go off the trail, it's not like there are all that many trees.
Passing a ten-year-old-league soccer game, I embarrass myself and shame my junior-high soccer coach by flubbing a trap of a stray ball. It bounces under my foot and into the weeds; I fish it out and flip it back.
A family is playing baseball or Calvinball, parents versus kids, on a diamond of coats. One rule is that fielders don't throw the ball, they chase the runner down. The son veers away from his father ahead of him and escapes off into the field. His father chases him down, tackles him, and carries him to the ground. "No tickling," his sister calls. The rule seems to be that the father has to swing at any pitch within a step and a reach of the bat to either side of him. He connects, once, and hits one out of the park, dribbling uphill well towards the tree whose roots I'm sitting in. The daughter chases it down, trips and skins her knee, gets up, and runs it back in. Home run.
"Mom, if you run down with your eyes closed, it's really cool."
A young boy is playing frisbee with his parents. He catches, tries to catch, with his head thrown back and his arms spread wide; when it hits the ground he chases it along its spiral. The red frisbee is backlit and shines like a jewel. His mother's throw into a gust of wind goes wild and lands behind her. All three stand. You go get it, she motions, and he runs leaping and windmilling his arms.
A girl and her mother are watching her grandmother hang by her arms from a set of rings. "No, Amah, you can't touch the ground! You touched the ground with your feet. You can't touch the ground. Look, Amah. Let me."
A couple is sitting on a log; the boy is talking on his cellphone. His girlfriend looks at the backs of her hands, at her nails.
Several people are holding their dogs back from investigating a raccoon who is blundering through the brush, in broad daylight. Could be sick, rabid.
Near the end, I take a wrong turn. Where does this path go? When I had come, I'd walked just down Beechwood to a tiny meadow I'd always seen from the road and wondered if it was part of the park or just somebody's yard. I saw a path entrance, meant to walk around the edge to it, but found and took another little path, downhill into the park. Now my wrong turn leads me out into the meadow on the path I didn't take.
