Saturday in the Park (I Think It Was the 7th of May)

Last weekend I picked up garbage in Veteran’s Park.  Doesn’t sound like much fun, but it turned out to be the nicest part of my weekend. 

Every year, the town’s Conservation Commission (on which I sit) hosts a cleanup of conservation land.  It usually turns out to be just the folks on the commission and a few local hard-core environmentalists that always help (thank you); this year was no exception.  It seems that we can’t attract other participants.  I could go on about the value of volunteering, for oneself and one’s children, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Veteran’s Park, which to me will always be the Brickyard Pond Conservation Area, is a wonderful forested area with walking trails, picturesque pond views, vernal pools, and remnants of an earlier Barrington.  I love the rusty, spidery grills, now buried among the trees, which once served up barbecues to families.  I have a ‘La Grande Jatte’ image of what it was like then; a small town, a tight community, somehow isolated from the insane pace that is today (I know this is inconsistent with the pond’s use during the turn of the 20th century, but let me have my moment, please). 

I also love finding brick fragments buried under ferns and branches, remnants of the former brickworks, and my hopes of finding a rare Barrington-imprinted brick.  The pond is lovely, meditative and calming.  And despite being a pest species, I like watching the mute swans glide.

But my favorite parts of the conservation area are the interior trails that are home to the birds and chipmunks.  The trails are formed by the past footsteps of the people who walked them and, in some areas, are only one person wide.  Despite being in the middle of town, the trails are quiet and peaceful and far from the rest of the world. 

On that sunny Saturday morning, I saw maybe three people (and a dog), so for most of the morning it was me and the trash bag.  I was on a garbage treasure hunt, looking for a metallic gleam in the sun or an unnatural blue in the bush, picking out old and some not-so-old cast-offs.   Lots of the expected beer cans and water bottles and a few Dunkin Donuts coffee cups; these are low point finds. 

The highlight of my junk quest included a small plastic Nemo fish and a perfectly whole pyrex glass pie plate.  I carried the Nemo fish for a while, since I was so taken with it and the possible story that went with it, but ultimately it joined the beer cans.  I still wonder about the small child that carried it to the park one day and lost it. I wonder if he or she was sad about losing it.

I’m amused by the fire pits that are hidden in the deepest part of the park.  These “social sites” were likely created by teenagers seeking some privacy to do the illicit things that teenagers do. It reminds me of my youth when my friends and I used to hide in the alcoves of train track trestles and smoke cigarettes as a sign of coolness and independence, despite how nasty they tasted ( I lived in New Jersey; we didn’t have conservation areas). 

The adult in me knows that this was stupid, but I did a lot of stupid things when I was a kid.  And I think about the kids today burning logs in the middle of the woods and drinking beer (lots of beer cans around the fire pits), and the adult in me knows that this is stupid, but I’m more afraid of them setting fire to the woods and getting hurt.  Times have changed, and cigarettes and beer are destructive in many ways, but I get the need for privacy.

And privacy is what the conservation area offers in abundance.  For 10 minutes I sat on a log and did nothing but listen to the birds, watch the sun filter in through the budding trees, and inspect the mushrooms growing out of the log.  I thought about the bugs and fungi that were decomposing the log and how that decomposing log was home to an abundance of life. Circle of life, on such a small, quiet scale. I can’t remember the last time I had such a nice ten minutes.

I managed to fill up a 39-gallon contractor garbage bag ‘til it was too heavy for me to schlep around, then I called it quits.  A respectable take, but nowhere near the amount of stuff left there. There was much trash that I couldn’t reach: down a steep incline, across a pool, shielded by thorny brambles and rose thickets. 

Through no internal compass of my own, I managed to find my way out of the park and back into civilization.  It’s a bit jarring to come out of that wonderful nature and realize you’ve just been in the small space between Maple and Nayatt; barely an inch on the map. 

Yet, the conservation area has a rejuvenating power, a nourishing effect, that feels like a deep breath of the soul. It is for this reason that I happily picked up trash on my free Saturday.  It is for this reason that the town’s conservation lands are irreplaceable.