Wonder Walks
finding new paths while still treading the old ones
I am nothing if not literal, so when you see words in my Substack title like “walk” and “path,” I am talking about concrete, neighborhoods, and parks. Sure, the metaphor can be there, if you insist. Both the Coneflower Creamery - the best ice cream in the Midwest - and my favorite thrift shop are located in the Blackstone District. These two businesses have temporarily brought me out of my Elmwood Park needle-skip-on-vinyl-walks and jogs over the past few decades and into a neighborhood half mile walk containing new sights, sunspots, smells, and trees.
Elmwood Park is still in my almost-everyday life. The thing I love about walking there is the circular path under the green shade of the elm, oak, spruce, and fir trees. The way you can stop to watch someone tee off on the 3rd or 4th holes of Elmwood Golf Course and hear that sweet smack of wood driver on golf ball. Elmwood Park helped keep my sanity intact during Covid. I would drive there from my home downtown and take daily walks through the 18-hole golf course grounds in rain, sleet, and snow. These days I park there, walk to the gym on the UNO (University of Nebraska at Omaha) campus, and walk back to the car after my swim or workout. We Bhadra Yogis practice Yoga there on Sunday mornings. I enjoy looking at the public pool, checking to see if a duck or goose is taking a swim before the humans get there at noon.
My longtime friend Nancy, who resides in Aksarben Village near the Keystone Trail, invited me out recently for our annual self-guided garden tour around Memorial Park. As we walked along, I couldn’t stop myself from weeding and deadheading (do I need to call the Nebraska Parks and Rec Association?) to the point where Nancy said, “Stop weeding and deadheading!” I did, but resentment soon set in. During our circumnavigation of the park, she pointed out these newly planted little plots of wildflowers here and there under the shade of the red oak and redbud trees.
Neither one of us had our phone on us at the time, so when I went back to take photos of the wildflowers, there was the Park & Rec guy looking intently at one of the plots. I asked him if the plots have a specific name, and he said, “I’m trying to figure that out right now.” I suggested “Micro-pollinator Gardens of Memorial Park,” and he liked that idea. (I’m here for you, Omaha.) I also shared with him my concern over the likelihood that the rampant off-the-leash dogs may run wild through these seven micro-pollinator gardens because many, many dog owners seem to think Memorial Park is a dog park. It is not - but that’s another post. Oh - wait. I already wrote about it here:
Collective Anxiety
It is possible to read the anxiety levels of your community by counting the number of dogs people are walking simultaneously. When I was a girl, no one walked multiple dogs, let alone one. If there was a dog in residence, it was because the kids had begged their parents for it. It was tied up in the back yard while the adults were…
We had a lovely walk, and as she heads back to California today for the rest of the summer, I am blessed to be one of a few people in charge of watering and weeding her garden plot in the Dundee neighborhood - another lovely place to walk, but where the ice cream is mediocre, at best.
Blessings & Love, and Happy Full Moon!
