Dear reader, please pardon the following bit of fiction:
I am conscious of my footsteps here. The park is on the backroads, so there are few people and fewer cars to pull my attention elsewhere. Short, squat, square-ish houses and shops surround the park and box everything in: The sound echoes several times. There are no birds – at least, very few – so there is nothing but the wind to keep my footsteps company.
I stop at a sign that reads “S____ Nature Park”. The name is worn off, but it is unimportant anyways: nothing changes about the park whether it is named Smith or Southby. The sign sits on the corner, near the busiest intersection, and some gardener keeps it meticulously clean as if to impress the few visitors on the road. The wood of the sign is chipped and whittled away by age and were it not for this gardener, the sign would have disappeared among ferns and vines.
The gardener seems a particularly cruel and sadistic fellow; I can see his handiwork everywhere. He enforces discipline with the hoe and the shear. No plant grows except at his pleasure, and the weeds, the wild berries, and the disorderly boughs at his displeasure.
Such a wretched work! The soil is dead and never allowed to live. The grass is allowed to live but never to grow. The trees to grow but never to flourish or multiply: the gardener rips all saplings from the ground and leaves them to starve. I do not know what beauty he finds in so many corpses.
Since there are so few plants, there are few animals. A couple of birds and squirrels cling to the trees, but nothing else. No foxes or raccoons, and certainly no deer or bobcats. How could they hope to live here? A dark alleyway strewn with broken bottles and half-empty fast food bags holds more hope of life than this place. At least in the alley there is food and shelter.
My thoughts dark, I lean up against one of the old trees (ignoring another sign that reads, “Do not walk on grass”). The tree is old, older than the gardener, older than the roads or the buildings. It is majestic, yes, but I look closer. The tree is stretched and weary. It should have died years ago, but the gardener will not let it go.
I hear water splashing and stand up. The sound is so unique here among the footsteps that I cannot help but be entranced by it. It draws me closer, deeper into the heart of the park. I rush headlong and unthinking.
I run, it seems, for an hour, and yet the park does not end. I have fallen into some storybook fox’s magic – all my thoughts are jumbled – but I do not care. I would welcome her company in this desolate place.
But there is no magic; I have run only a short way. The need for a friend is maddening sometimes, and so I must be mad already.
There is the water. I hope for a river or stream, at least an active pond, but the gardener crushes even this. He is there himself, the scoundrel, standing beside a fountain scrubbing it free of moss. He wears clothes of alabaster white and growls like a rabid dog when dirt dares to stain them. After splashing some water on himself to clean some grime away, he sees me and, laughing, he stands.
“Welcome to the park,” he says grandly. He sees I am standing off the path and frowns, but he continues on. “Do you like it?”
I am silent. I have so many thoughts, so many things I want to say, but they are fueled by so much bitterness I cannot speak. And what good is bitterness against reckless destruction?
I give a nod before he thinks me a complete idiot. “Yes,” I say, “this is what a park should be like.”
He grins and bows his head to me and sets off down the path that cuts through the middle of the park. Alone, I lay on the edge of the fountain, closing my eyes and pretending I am beside a river. It is no use: even with my eyes shut to hide the reality of the scene, I know what is false. There are no hawks calling from above, no willows whistling; there are no timid hooffalls of grazers coming near for a drink, no howls or yips or barks or growls – only footsteps. I am left to wonder if another word might be erased from the sign without changing its meaning.