A Walk in the Park: Patience

By Patrick J. Walsh

Cold wet darts of ice lashed at my coat as I pushed a thick wrap of snow off the hood of my car.

The storm had come late to this long, weary winter, and its intensity seemed an almost personal affront to those of us who have had cause enough already for sadness and struggle during these difficult days.

Fortunately, the sleet portion of the storm wound its way to exhaustion as the morning hours faded into the afternoon, and I made my way to the park as the day neared its end.

And then, as I walked in the sunlight, the glory of nature’s wise progress traced its line on my mind and spirit. 

Reflected off the clean carpet of snow, the light of the sun danced with a sparkling radiance, like a sprite in a tale once whispered by the very old to the very young.

And in an arc of water at the edge of the icy lid of the upper pond, the warmth of the sun opened a dappled window on the life of the fish and flora of the murky world below the surface.

The chill of the morning had given way to timid, tentative warmth; and in every yard of fading, melting snow there was witness to the passing of this long, exhausting winter.

 

As I made my way along my usual path, thinking of the progress of the day — from the sad, cold rain of morning to the hopeful, mild sunlight of the afternoon — I could not help but be overwhelmed by gratitude for the unfailing mechanisms of patience. 

One small soul grateful for the unanticipated mercy of a warm afternoon in March, I make my way forward through hard days one short stride at a time.

The larger life of the park, meanwhile, moves on with a majesty and radiance that is amplified by the incongruity of weather out of time, and indicative of nature’s stoic resolve, in the passing of day to day, and season to season.

© Patrick J. Walsh

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A Walk in the Park: The Men

"...they gather careful and quiet around the open grill, 

meticulously ensuring that no flame goes unminded..."

By Patrick J. Walsh

Many families happily occupy the park during the seasons of warm weather and bright light. On weekends there are small groups gathered at picnic tables, the elder and middle aged members of the family engaged in conversation, the younger adults trailing along after the littlest ones, who prefer to play on the swings or the slide, or to toss a ball, or to simply run around.

Sometimes there are volleyball nets and loosely formed teams playing for fun; and on occasion there are goals delineated by plastic trash cans or bright orange traffic cones, and small groups of friends kicking a soccer ball.

In the late Spring and throughout the long days of summer, it is not uncommon to see a decorative tablecloth fixed to the surface of one of the wooden tables with the string end of a group of lighter-than-air balloons, together proclaiming the celebration of a birthday or similar milestone event.

photo © Patrick J. Walsh

They populate silent prayers in the chill wind...

Family Gatherings

And all around these human manifestations of family life, there are other gatherings. At about the same time each year that the first cake and presents appear in the picnic area, the first goslings totter out onto the open grass near the pond. Bedecked in the grayish yellow down that softens the first few months of their existence, the tiny geese present a comic living tableau of life in the bird world. Their dark beaks seemingly too big for their tiny heads, their webbed feet seeming only loosely attached at the end of their spindly legs, they follow along as the adult members of the family excavate the edge of the pond for food, or move into the water itself.

In the woods nearby, meanwhile, there are hollows in the earth where rabbits raise their young. The tiny ones just begun on their journey into the world, not yet grown into their cartoonish oversized ears, depend on the keen curious explorations of their parents to provide sustenance and to protect them from danger.

There are families everywhere in the park: the fox with her kits, the gray flash of squirrels scurrying across the leaves in the woods; the spawn of fish and frogs in and around the water, the inexhaustible supply of buzzing, humming, droning insects in all corners. And above, in the branches, nests are alive with the heedless haranguing of twittering baby birds, hungry to be fed.

Throughout the seasons, the family life of the park is augmented by a carnivalesque array of other individuals and groups. There are small gatherings of youngsters hanging out at the edge of the parking lot, couples strolling hand-in-hand along the road, cyclists of astounding athleticism making their way through the trails in the woods, and the occasional hiker dreamily walking along from one area to the next, seeming lost in his thoughts.

The Men

And there are the men. There are not many of them; they gather in small numbers, often huddled together as though to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. In summer they are nearly invisible, collecting in the remotest parts of the park. They are there early, and late. Sometimes there is some marker of their day’s work, in a shopping cart half-filled with cans destined for redemption for the small amount of change they will bring. Sometimes there is the smoky aroma of fish frying on one of the open grills that are a fixture throughout the wide picnic area.

The men are there, even when they are not physically in the park. They populate silent prayers in the chill wind of wintry afternoons, giving rise to thoughts of the admonition of Moses (in the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy) about how ‘the poor will be always with you’:

“For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.”

Silently, from afar, the men haunt the mirror images of the families who gather for the brief happy celebrations of summer. In the first warm days of Spring, they return, thinner, grayer, even more ill-defined in character and form, having been faded by the worst days and nights of winter.

And as the Fall approaches, they gather careful and quiet around the open grill, meticulously ensuring that no flame goes unminded amid the treasure of richly colored Autumn leaves, brittle and dry, that are spread randomly across the hardened ground.

© Patrick J. Walsh

The Walk in the Park series:

• The Hawk

• The First Warm Day of Spring

• Encounter in Autumn

• A Walk Beneath the Dripline

• A Walk in the Park

The First Warm Day of Spring

By Patrick J. Walsh

Walking the usual route in the park, along the road that leads up the hill to the upper parking lot, I felt the warmth of the first truly warm day of the Spring.

About a quarter mile distant, out on the broadest part of the lake, a goose was making that odd sound that always reminds me of beer drinkers’ laughter — the weird guttural staccato that makes obvious why some long ago linguist decided that a group of geese are best described as a “gaggle.”

A few more feet toward that part of the road that stretches over the culvert that connects the stream on the left to the wide part of the lake on the right, and my mind drifted back to the days when I used to play along the edge of the stream while my brother fished nearby...

The goose quieted down just as I reached the railing at the left edge of the road, just above the water. An odd gurgling followed; a demented sort of splash, somewhere below and slightly upstream. It was a fish — a reasonably large fish, given the shallowness of the stream — his tail fin slapping the surface as he struggled toward the opening to the tunnel beneath the road.

...my mind drifted back to the days when I
used to play along the edge of the stream...

My first thought: I need to get a picture of this! Fumbling through the pockets of my sweatshirt for the camera, I wondered at the strangeness of the circumstance: the fish desperately trying to make his way forward, his very survival dependent on closing the distance from the scant flow of water where he was, onward to the opening of the wide tunnel beneath the road, and then through to the freedom of the lake beyond... and my initial reaction only the simple-minded desire to document the epic scene with a quick snapshot.

Then another idea took hold: wouldn’t it be relatively easy to simply make my way down the hill to the water’s edge and just reach over and pluck the poor creature out of his gasping, grasping misery? I could just carry him the twenty or so yards he needed, then drop him back into the water at a spot where he’d have enough depth to finish the rest of the trek on his own.

A better thought, this — not that it actually led me down the bank, but better because it immediately raised the question of whether or not it would be appropriate for me to mess around in things about which I knew so little. Catching a fish on the end of a line, I understood; interfering with the course of a fish engaged in a life and death struggle with the very forces that enabled him to live and grow in the first place, well... that seemed a little large for the lightness of the afternoon.

Then, in the sheer instant it took for my thoughts to travel the distance between my initial intent to photograph the poor beast’s struggle and my ultimate quandary about the desire to help and the perhaps questionable propriety of doing so, I lost sight of both fish and stream for several seconds.

In that brief interlude, the dark, thin form flitted closer to the gaping opening beneath the road, and I heard but could not see as he made one last slosh and a plunking sound, as he made one final leap across the surface and then vanished into the murky liquid dusk below.

He was free, released into a wide safe swathe of the lake, to be tested no further by the narrowness of the stream; I was free, to continue my walk in the warm, dry air of the afternoon, pondering the current of my thoughts when tested by the inescapable austerities of nature.

© 2012 Patrick J. Walsh

• Photo, Fish, or Refrain — what would you do in this situation?
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Related posts (Other Walks in the Park):

• Encounter in Autumn

• A Walk Beneath The Dripline

• A Walk in the Park