At the Park

 

(Third in a series...)

 

    A clear bright sunny morning. Cool now, with the promise of heat later in the day. I'm sitting at a picnic table at Creekside Park. Last year as part of a flood-control program the town demolished a couple of stores that used to be here and built the park as an outdoor gathering place. It's nice: they laid down wooden beams all around the area, mulched the ground in between with wood chips, and then added seven picnic tables, each equipped with its own overhead umbrella. There are also lights strung across the park from various trees to various poles, which lend the park a festive air in the evening, when the tables are often packed with families listening to musicians who come to play there. The whole park is built over a land bridge which spans the creek running beneath it.
    Right now I'm the only one in the park, but all around there are people in motion as the town gears up for its work day: bikers, walkers (many with dogs), people lining up outside the bagel shop. There's a guy standing just at the edge of the park wearing bluetooth earphones and staring off into space as he holds up his end of a conversation with someone invisible to me. The traffic on San Anselmo Avenue is light but steady: suburban moms cruising by in their late-model SUVs, dads in their sports cars on the way to the office. Here comes a big refrigerator truck, compressor thrumming, brakes squealing as the driver pulls over in front of the bakery just down the street. A woman in black slacks and a blue tie-dyed t-shirt, her black hair dyed mostly blue as well, walks across the park, frowning. A few minutes later she re-appears, carrying a bag of something, and crosses the park in front of me again, going back the way she came. There are a bunch of banging noises as the guy from the truck drops pallets of food from the truckbed to the street before carrying them into the bakery.

The whole park at this time of day is shaded by redwood trees, twenty-nine of them, by my count. But there are little patches of sunlight all around, appear to wiggle or dance as the morning's light breeze fans their branches. To my left, just to the edge of the park, there's a wooden bench facing onto a lawn area which is bathed in golden sunlight.

I've been waiting for something to happen, something remarkable to present itself to me as being particularly worthy of attention or comment, but it seems like this is not going to be that kind of morning. Which is okay, I think. As I'm about to leave, I see a large poster display detailing the long-term plan for the area. It explains that what is now the park will eventually be opened up to reveal the creek beneath it. This park is not going to be here for long. But I find it odd, and oddly reassuring, that here in the middle of town, surrounded by roads and traffic and commerce, this island of strategically curated inactivity has been brought into being. For as long as it lasts.