Abington Parks

It is a warm October morning, and I walk down the sidewalk with my beautiful German Shepherd dog, Akira. We turn right at the corner and walk until we come to the rough surface of the asphalt parking lot. Another right turn and in a few moments our feet sink into the gritty and sandy surface of the park trail. Then, we turn left toward the east and the morning sun warms our faces. I take a deep breath of the aroma of crisp dry leaves mixed with the smell of cut grass that is damp with morning dew. A sudden gust of wind blows my hair across my face, and I shake my head. Akira picks up her pace; she is so happy to be outside again.

The memory of sitting on a park bench in this very same park, while I rocked my baby in his coach and watched over my other two children comes back to me. They were playing on the brand new playground equipment, while other children rolled in the big sand piles. The township workmen were still spreading the sand around in the brand new Roslyn Park. That was 1964. In a few months we would move from our little ranch house to a bigger house at the edge of the Park, where I still live today.

The friendly barking of some neighborhood dogs in their backyards cause Akira to lean towards the left and I urge her to keep going. It suddenly feels cooler, because the sunshine is briefly blocked by a long shadow. My foot finds the spongy grass at the edge of the trail, and another memory returns. I mentally walk along the woodland paths of my childhood and gather the wild flowers that grow along the sides of the creek. I can see the little spiders that skated on the surface of the water as they frantically tried to run against the current.

It was 1939 and my parents and I moved into a little house on the other side of this very same Township. It was Fox Chase Manor. In 1945 we would move down the street to another little house that backed up to a creek with endless woods on the other side. Earlier, my father had organized the neighbors to purchase the woods to keep it free from development, and year’s later The Township would purchase “Manor Woods” for one of the Abington Parks.

The hollow vibration of my feet on the wooden planks of the bridge echoes through my lower body as we cross to the other side. The familiar smell of the moist earth and the musical sound of rippling water surround us with pleasant sensation.

The memory of the rich red clay that I know is layered on the sides of this creek makes me smile. I know it is there, because I dug it up with the Roslyn children in 1971 when I was employed as a supervisor in this park by Abington Township. The next six years I went to many more parks and playgrounds to teach arts and crafts to the children who filled them to overflowing during the wonderful summertime.

Now, Akira and I are walking on a hard surface and we climb up a gradual hill that  curves around to the right. We are startled by the jarring shriek of a siren that rises and falls as it passes by on the highway beyond us. I am reminded that it is now too dangerous for me to cross that street that in my youth was a simple country road. This road used to dissolve into a dead end near my childhood home, where we could safely ride our bikes for hours and stop and explore another creek or another woodland path. 

How fortunate we are in Abington to have had people who have preserved natural spaces for recreation, for wild life and for trails like this one. I remember walking for miles with my skates hung across my back in the wintertime to skate on a private pond that a generous man allowed the local children to use, when the ice was right. It was on an estate owned by Mr. Lessing Rosenwald, and the Wonderful Alverthorpe Park is the bequest of this generous gentleman.

I hear a male voice speaking. It seems to be ahead of me.

” Are you training that dog?” he calls out.

“Excuse me,” I am not sure I heard correctly.

“Are you a trainer?” he says.

“No,” and I chuckle to myself and smile again, “I am blind.”

Dogs have their own park in Abington, but Akira can hike with me wherever the trails may go. That is because Akira is a Seeing Eye dog guide and we are a team.My ears pick up the sounds around us, because I wear two powerful hearing aids. Yes, I am deaf and blind, but I still teach workshops and make art, and with my beautiful Akira, I still get plenty of exercise on our wonderful township trails.

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