just a good park
Hi. The world is bad. I am not optimistic about a single, solitary thing right now. This is the park where I go for walks on days when it is warm enough to do so.
Let's pretend we're really there, and I'm giving you a tour. I'll include pictures I've taken over the past few years, during different seasons. That way you'll get to see the flowering trees.
Link to read in full, if necessary.
So this place used to be a golf course, but then it closed, and then nature reclaimed it for awhile, and now it's open to the public. Which is so awesome. Every time I'm there, I feel like I'm striking a blow to Big Golf. (We will ignore the fact that there's another golf course still operating less than a mile away.)
I suspect the reason it failed as a golf course is because the terrain is not flat. At all. For instance, once we've exited the parking lot, we're going to turn right and traverse a perpetually muddy expanse of hills. There could be a yearlong drought, and it would still be muddy.
Fortunately, the main loop is paved beyond this point.
I've been seeing these plants a lot, and they are vibrantly purple in person. My iPhone 12 (itself purple) refuses to capture just how purple they are, so these pictures are edited. And still not as purple as the real things.
Several steep hills later, we have reached the highest point of the route. We can pause here if you want to catch your breath. What I really want to show you is the brook. I will probably call it a creek by accident, but every recent map I've seen says it's a brook.
To access it, we're going to carefully make our way down this hill.
And there it is.
We're going to follow it for awhile, and then cross it again. You'll be able to hear, and barely see, a waterfall.
The parks department has not yet blazed a sanctioned trail to the waterfall.
For about a week in March or April, depending on the weather, the flowering trees are in bloom.
I don't usually take the detour to the pine grove, because it's kind of buggy and creepy and out of the way, but I thought you might like to see it.
The brook isn't as photogenic from this bridge, due to an abandoned barn from the park's golf course days, but what can you do? It's certainly making an effort.
From here, it's a mostly flat, paved walk back to the parking lot. Anticlimactic, yes, but I prefer to get the hills out of the way as soon as possible. I've done the trail backwards, and it just doesn't hit the same.
I did see an evil plant here once, in 2022. Look at this thing. I love it.
That was the park. This is an active blog. I promise. An active blog that has posts on it, and will have posts again. (Feel free to request a topic, if you want; it's really helped me with writer's block in the past!) I apologize for my disappearance, and thank you as always for reading!