The park has a busy playground, a paved walking trail around a lake stocked with fish and frequented by geese. But it's been a park for just a little while. The neighborhood the park was built for has only been around for 20 years or so. This ground had a different look before that, having been part of a plantation begun early in the 19th century, with much of it farmed until sometime in the mid- to late 20th century.
A weathered old gate stands where wagons and cattle passed in other times.
An old fence post stands near the gate. No one needs it, but it's not in the way. The three strands of rusted barbed wire have cut deeply into the post, still a live tree when the wire was fastened to it, a tree that lived a few years as it grew over the wire. Now it sits out of place in time, unnoticed by any but the few who might pass it on foot. But it says something about how people once used the land.
Beyond the gate and the post, a copse of trees remains in a low-lying area drained by a small intermittent creek. All my life I've wandered to spots like this, more curious about nature's arrangements than the useful but somewhat sterile human constructions nearby.
An Osage Orange tree growing by the stream holds its ground with large, powerful roots, though the roots are eroded, as some I pointed out recently on the bank of another stream.
Nearby, a still winter-bare honeylocust tree reveals its long thorns. In a few weeks, white flowers among the green leaves will obscure the thorns that grow up and down the tree-trunk.
In the distance, the playground's brightly painted equipment marks another, more prominent, and undoubtedly, more attractive place for young children.
But for now, I'm keeping it in the distance.
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