Seward Park

           Go down Ranier Avenue through all those south-side neighborhoods nobody I know ever goes to like Mount Baker and Ranier Valley except maybe for Quartermania night at AMF Bowling where we pretend like Ian remembers us even though he’s always so frazzled, past the discount mattress place where we got our way too comfortable used bed, past the fast food places we haunted when we lived in that big house up on Beacon Hill with those wastes of people that made me doubt that people in Seattle were really people at all, past alllllll of that for what feels like forever and you hang a left on Orcas and there’s Seward Park, on a map looking like Popeye’s arm after he’s chugged a can of spinach, a fat peninsula sticking up and out into Lake Washington, 2.4 miles to walk all the way around it and we did walk all the way around it and it was mostly sunny and in the bay by the parking lot seagulls fought madly for Fritos or Doritos that these girls were throwing into the water and the ducks tried to get in on it too but they weren’t really feisty enough and we walked and then a kid on a bike wasn’t brave enough for a puddle and signs warned of Poison Ivy and all the bathrooms had pictures of a scary dude whose been assaulting girls and you should call the police if you see this man, and we walked and ate Starbursts out of my pocket and there were people fishing and we sat on a stony beach and it was almost hot enough to be really good and hot and there we planned a barbecue for later where we would eat chicken and asparagus and Easter Candy but we wouldn’t have enough charcoal and everyone would bring their own six pack and then we’d drink strong drinks at a Chinese Restaurant and talk about nothing, but that was for later and for now we walked and it was getting on 4 and we wondered how well we should clean up the apartment because it was a total mess but was there really time and then we saw something swimming in the water and everyone was excited but we couldn’t find where it came to shore and one kid said it was muskrat so I believed him and then we heard some knockin and it was definitely a wood-pecker but he was hiding from us real good and we never found him and then the car was nice and toasty from the sun, and that’s that.

Let's Go to the Zoo!

          The Zoo has always been a near sacred place for me as far back as I can remember. When I was little I had a host of medical problems, like asthma and food allergies.  Many of these are still with me now but everything is harder for a little kid old.  My parents were just discovering the full extent of my allergies, taking me to see an allergy specialist in Philadelphia two and a half hours away.  I don’t remember going to this allergist or calling him Ole Doc Scovern with jocular familiarity.  I don’t remember any of this because it wasn’t a whole lot of fun.  I’ve had allergy tests since, getting a section of your arm pricked with little samples of substances, food, pollens, trees, molds.  If nothing happens, you aren’t allergic to them, but if a big hive wells up, you are. It stings and makes you pretty queasy. Back then, there were a lot of hives. I'm glad I don't remember.

     My reward for persevering like a trooper was going to the zoo afterward (just as McDonalds became the reward for sitting through soccer practice in later years.)   I don’t remember anything about the allergist or his office,  but I do have a startlingly clear memory of one of the zoo trips when I was around five.  I’m in the reptile house with its bright red carpet.  I’m standing in front of a glass habitat, looking at a white albino crocodile warming himself on a boulder.  His bright pink eye is watching me as I’m throwing up on that carpet, throwing up the milk trial they gave me earlier at the doctor's office.  It sounds pretty bad yes, but the thing is, I bet that my memory held onto it not because throwing up in public is awful, but because that albino crocodile was pretty awesome.

     I was into animals when other kids were going through trucks, trains, and construction vehicles with smiley faces tacked onto them.  Besides a deviation into the kickass world of dinosaurs, and much later Star Wars, animals were what it was all about.  I collected plastic animal figures and waited for my animal fact files to be sent through the mail five at a time.  I debated impossible animal fights match-ups from the backseat, something my Mom reminds me of to this day. "If a tiger and a shark fought, who would win?"  It would obviously depend on where they fought.  Tiger's are the only big cats that like water, but c'mon…it's a shark.  Luckily for them both, this would probably never come to pass.  I remember even being disappointed that we didn't live in Asia or Africa, one of those places overflowing with exotic animals. No, we lived in Pennsylvania, squirrels and deer running amok.  The Zoo brought them to me.

     Portions of my life’s story so far can be told through trips to the zoo.  My senior year of high school I was in New York with my parents.  We had the afternoon to kill and anything in the whole big city to do.  "When you were little this would have been easy," my Mom said, "I would have just taken you to the zoo." I hadn't been to the city more than a few times, couldn't remember seeing the Statue of Liberty or any of those famous landmarks.  I was eighteen then, but who was I kidding, of course I still wanted to go to the zoo!  I had to be dragged away from playing tag with a seal at the Pittsburgh Zoo after visiting my sister there in college.  I would have run back and forth along his tank all afternoon.  

          

        Years later, alone for an afternoon in Madrid, I braved three subway transfers in Spanish to go to their zoo.  I watched Spanish families throw food scraps to the sixty strong tribe of ferocious baboons who went wild, biting, clawing, screaming at each other for bits of cookie, reinforcing laws of brute force dominance.   An hour away from Ithaca was the dinky little Syracuse zoo, a trip Erica and I made from early on countless times to see the spectacled bears, the tiny Duiker deer, the pile of ring-tailed lemurs, and the not-to-be-fucked-with Mandrill, whose escape would certainly spell the doom of all upstate New York.  On an impromptu weekend trip to Chicago, me and friends watched laughing as the Takin (an extremely slow-witted, golden goat-antelope of the Himalayas pictured above) snargled its own puddle of piss on a hot afternoon.  On our winter vacation to Panama, Erica and I still ended up at the zoo just outside the capitol.  Kind of a sorry place like all Developing World Zoos (also known as animal prisons), but got up close to their national symbol the Harpy Eagle (which could tear up our Bald Eagle if it ever came to that, and in reality often eats monkeys.) 

             Here in Seattle, the Woodland Park Zoo is half a mile from our apartment.  It's  on the small side, but pretty good as zoos go.  It has all the classics everyone wants to see, elephants, big cats, gorillas, along with a pretty stellar collection of tropical birds from Asia and South America.  Erica's parents know us well, and a membership to this zoo is a gift well used many, many times over.  Zoos normally cost twenty bucks or more and you feel obligated to spend four hours to see every last animal and get every penny's worth of edjutainment.  Here we go even if we only have twenty minutes to spare.  It's nice to go look into the morose, thoughtful eyes of an orangutan now and again or watch toucans rubbing their plastic-looking bills against the side of a branch inside the steamy Jungle House.

     As an old animal nerd, it really bugs me when parents allow their kids to learn things wrong.  The Woodland Park Zoo has no hyenas, the spindly legged, big eared guys running around across rom the lions are NOT hyenas, they are African Wild Dogs, and they're super cool.  "Those are hyenas honey," I hear one Mom say to her kids.  There's a sign a few feet away from her that clearly says what they are.  I hope they come back when the kids learn how to read and maybe they'll correct her.  

     "Look! Lions, like Alex, he sings and dances!" a Dad says to his little son.  I realize he's talking about the Lion from Madagascar, voice acting a la Ben Stiller.  

     "No Dad," the kid says oh so seriously, "Lions don't dance."  Yeah kid, don't take that animated dumbing-down of the animal kingdom.  Maybe lions sing, but they certainly don't dance. 

     Kids are pretty hilarious however, and sometime's the things they mis-understand are too unique to be corrected.  On passing a big wooden sign for the new Meerkat exhibit, a child, overtaken with unbridled excitement yells to his mom, "Look Mom, Murk Rats!"  She doesn't quite laugh, but she certainly smiles. "Yeah, let's go see the murk rats."  Murky rats killed half of Europe with the plague, while Meerkats are extremely adorable and are the Woodland Park Zoo's new cash cow.  Nothing brings in the dollars like Timon…Pumba less so.  

     When I'm walking through this zoo, especially when I'm here by myself, my path inevitably leads to the Northern Trail area, and its two massive brown bears. I'm sitting in the enclosed space down by the bear's watering hole.  They're looking restless, they know food is coming. All the animals have their feeding schedules memorized.  A thick plate of glass protects me but their hulking presence still gives off a tangible aura of tension.  They lumber down onto boulders by the water filled with small salmon.  One of them catches my eye for a few moments, making me wonder if they ever forget they are constantly being watched by creatures who would normally flee from them in terror.  The bear looks away from me, maybe I was imagining the contact completely.  A net filled with roots, tubers, and meat scraps is lowered from above to the feet of the waiting bear.  The two bears eat as much as they want before lumbering back up the hill.  Fifteen or so crows fly in as the bears depart, picking at what the bears didn't want.  They scatter again as the larger of the two bears makes another pass of the area for no reason I can tell, besides to clear out the noisy crows. Their enclosure, habitat, or whatever the official zoo term is now, is big but not quite big enough, like at every zoo, even the best of them.  How can a few thousand square feet compare to the supreme vastness of places like Alaska, Yukon, or Nunavuut? 

           But I've always felt more positive than negative about zoos.  They can be real depressing it's true, seeing wild animals pacing around in such a regular pattern that all the grass dies in their circular route, animals whose range in their natural habitat can be eighty square miles. The catch however is that the vastnesses of Alaska, Canada, and Russia are not infinite, they're forever shrinking.  Wild animals are continually pushed into tiny corners, captured to be sold as pets, and butchered for fake medicines (thanks China).  Zoos, even if they curtail an animal's natural lifestyle, provide refuge from the worst humans can do, and make them accessible to the rest of us.  As their wilderness diminishes, its harder and harder to see them where they belong, and getting to Siberia, Sumatra or the Serengeti is beyond most people's budget.  For the price of a zoo ticket, they are available to everyone.  Zoo-goers are also funding the continued welfare of the animals.  It's a small step in the right direction.  Zoos serve as a minor apology to the natural balance we've fucked up so indiscriminately and without a look back.  

      I didn't become a six year old well-spring of random animal facts by seeing them in their natural habitat, it was my zoo trips.  Watching Jack Hannah and shows on National Geographic is great, but it's not the same as looking up at a real-life giraffe towering over you, grabbing leaves with its giant purple tongue.  I want kids everywhere to go to the zoo and love it like I did, to realize that a bulldozer or a monster-truck could never, EVER be cooler than a friggin Grizzly Bear.

Down by the Water

On a mostly sunny Wednesday back in October I found myself sitting on a log in Myrtle Edwards Park looking out over the water, unsure of why exactly I was there.  I was trying to find Elliot Bay Park, but it turns out they're the same place (changed from Elliot Bay to Myrtle Edwards in 1976, but all the signs in the park still say Elliot Bay Park).  I had come over to the West Queen Anne neighborhood to stop at a place called Mustapha’s Fine Moroccan Food Importers for some preserved lemons I needed to try out making my own chicken/olive tajine.  I had expected dim lighting, Moroccan themed carpets and other decorations, and if I was lucky, a thickly mustachioed Moroccan man with whom I could reminisce about the places I had been in his country.  Instead I found a small gray office and a squat blonde woman who brought me the jar out of storage in the back.  I guess they’re more of an internet supplier than an atmospheric North African shop, my mistake.  

After that I got back in my car to find the park.  Over a bridge, around some corners, into a industrial warehouse district, these all seemed to indicate that I had gone the wrong way, until I pulled into a parking lot that marked the beginning of Elliot Bay Trail/Terminal 91 Bike Path. 

A thin strip of grass and path, Myrtle Edwards Park straddles Elliot Bay.  A steep incline of rocks and driftwood slopes down to cold saltwater, the Sound stretching off into the distance, mid day sun casting a blinding sheen over the view.  I set off down the path heading south, to see what this place is all about, and who like me has decided to spend the afternoon here. 

 It might be just because it’s the middle of a work day, but this park seems to have attracted the pensive, lone thoughtful type, and today I am no exception.  An old Asian man in a canary yellow sweatshirt and turquoise sweatpants glides past me on rollerblades, his arms folded neatly behind his back.  A man in heavy work clothes, thick brown boots and a baseball cap sits on a bench. He holds his head in his hands, staring intently at a single spot in the grass.  Further down the path a punk girl decked out in a spiky jean jacket, covered in band patches maybe in her late twenties sits in the grass. With her are two nearly identical black and white boxers, who look up quizzically at me as I pass by.  Her bright red and green hair stands in a tall Mowhawk.  She's lost in thought.

I had taken the day off work for no real reason besides an inability to stand the thought of going to Everett that morning, and also to give myself lots of empty time in which to worry and gnaw my brain over the CTscan I was getting the next day, for which I also called off work.  Here by myself at the park, I have all the time I need to ponder all the horrible or wonderful things that could happen in my immediate future.

There is an immense red and black tanker parked in the water just ten or fifteen feet from the shore, a small metal bridge linking it to the service road that crosses the pedestrian path and enters the huge concrete processing plant beyond the park.  The side of the ship says Ecoan Company, but I can’t figure out what cargo the boat's carrying.  There is a big sign on the ship that reads, NO SMOKING.  Maybe it’s something flammable like coal.  A three story system of scaffolding stands next to the ship, encasing a system of chutes and tubes connecting ship to building.  

I find a big piece of driftwood here near the ship, a nice spot to take in the surroundings.  A long line of little black and white water birds, Surf Scoters, are paddling single file towards the ship.  A steady stream of water spews from both sides of the boat.  The birds are collecting here.  Maybe there are some little invertebrates in that bilge water being flushed out the hull, something birds like to eat.  Ten or fifteen minutes pass and they form the same orderly line, heading back out to open water.

I didn’t know what to expect from the next day.  The CTscan could have shown me a cancerous festering in my chest, a final explanation for that constant, dark pain down in there I don’t understand and still can’t be rid of. I’ve pictured it;  a crusty black sphere hidden under unfolding layers of book paper, an image that came to me one night half-awake, furiously trying to fall asleep.  The idea of cancer was quickly dismissed by the test results, leaving me with my doubt only stronger than before.  But that day the prospect of it felt very real. The thought was terrifying, but there in the sun, by the water I could look at it clearly, with less fear than sitting in our little apartment watching TV or at my sloppy desk in a windowless office.  

I put myself in pretty places to make my days feel grander, my thoughts more important, my problems more titanic.  Adding weight to my reality makes things more like a book I’ve read, a movie I’ve seen, one of the thousand things I use to construct myself.  An elderly couple walks by my bleached white piece of driftwood, and I’m thinking about how no one else can know me like I know me, even those I know well.  No one else can know all the things I’ve ever thought about but never talked about. Everyone has some degree of inner life which never leaves the inside of their head.

A big group of pigeons has settled onto the flat top of the ship’s scaffolding chute, bobbing their necks and cooing softly.  They all take to the air in unison, flapping frantically away.  They saw the falcon much sooner than I did.  I turn in the direction of their fear and see a Peregrine Falcon, the dark brown head and spotted chest unmistakeable, careening in like an arrow from above the processing plant.  The pigeons realize that landing isn’t yet an option as the falcon gains on them, and they fly higher, trying to stay in a cluster. Still several of them fall behind.  The falcon picks out the stragglers and makes a B-line through the air, but isn’t quite fast enough.  The stragglers catch up to the rest of the flock, and the falcon has lost his burst.  He flies up to the top of the chute, sitting alone where the whole flock of pigeons had been moments before.  They come to rest on the highest part of the boat, down at the opposite end.  They cautiously resume their bobbing, their gazes still fixed on their would-be-killer across the way. 

I’ve left the driftwood and walked down the path, finding a spot where the scaffolding tower blocks out the sun and lets me look clearly at the falcon.  I saw one before, but it was almost a year ago over on the Olympic Peninsula, and never hunting.  It’s plain to see he hasn’t given up yet, simply gathering strength for another go.

He dives off the chute, tucking his wings into a tight V and speeding across the gap between them.  They’re off the boat almost as fast, flying up and over me toward the processing plant.  His attempts at chase are less effective this time, he doesn’t come as close to catching the slowest of them. The first time he had the element of surprise. They come back to rest on top of the scaffolding where they started, understanding that he is no longer a threat. The falcon flies off towards downtown, to his high roost somewhere among the updrafts and skyscrapers, to look for another meal.

When you’re a kid, you think about what kind of animal you want to be.  I’d be willing to guess many of you picked a predator, a tiger, a cheetah, a wolf, a shark.  Predators are awesome it’s true, and many of them are extremely intelligent, graceful, horrifying, and beautiful like that Peregrine Falcon.  But we forget how hard it is to catch your own dinner. I’ve never done it, and the humans who do it use guns, or the more badass one’s bow n’ arrows.  That falcon put all his energy into catching one of those stupid pigeons and came up with nothing.  Too many times like that and he’s dead, and maybe the chicks waiting back in the nest if  both he and his wife come back empty taloned.  The pigeons, they might get eaten occasionally, or hit by a bus, but they can peck at whatever garbagey-foodscraps they find. They don’t have to chase down hive-minded, elusive prey in order to eat.   Sometimes, being a pigeon sounds nice and cushy.

I walk another mile or so down the path to a sign that tells me I am leaving Myrtle Edwards Park.  The area still looks like a park, still feels like a park, but apparently it is no longer a park, just an undeveloped green area with walking and biking paths.  A sign up ahead tells me I'll soon enter the Olympic sculpture garden, but I think that's something best saved for another day.

As I walk back it's getting closer to five, and the park feels more lively.  The punk girl with the two boxers is now joined by her equally punked out boyfriend, both of them talking to the dogs in cutesy voices that might diminish their cred if someone heard.  Three teenagers in shorts are playing scrabble on the grass, and there's some good words on the board.  There's a fishing pier close to the parking lot, a jetty sticking out into the bay.  Three or four fisherman are sitting their silently watching the water, while their stereo plays a Mariah Carey song.  A belted kingfisher flies up from below, lands on the jetty's railing across from me.  He cackles a few times, and swoops back off.

I feel stronger after taking in the sun, being outside with my thoughts.  Now, back to my life.

Pugs and Unicycles - Green Lake Park

          Green Lake Park is a 2.8 mile circuit of path surrounding, as you might have guessed, Green Lake. It’s not far from our apartment and walking a little less than 3 miles is about the extent of my exercising these days besides the occasional weekend hike. Green Lake makes for a pretty walk, curving all around the amoeba-shaped lake, ducks all a-quacking and paddling about. It serves as an outdoor gym for North Seattle, people from all over the area coming to walk, jog, rollerblade, bike, and also to be seen by others doing all of these things. Erica and I have been trying to go once a week when we both get home from work. Now that fall has undeniably arrived it’s been getting dark around 630ish every night and we usually end up coming back in the dark. I only now remember last December driving home from work in pitch black before 5pm.

          Even if it’s cold and sometimes gloomy, after spending the entire day in a windowless office staring at a computer screen, my being aches for movement and fresh air. Besides giving our couch-prone bodies a bit of mild cardio-work and a chance at escaping workaday oblivion, walking Green Lake also provides ample opportunities for viewing numerous breeds of dogs with their owners, and a chance to see the latest in ridiculous forms of recreational transportation.

          The people of Seattle love their dogs, sometimes obsessively so. Case in point, we pass a couple walking with two pugs, one a bit fatter than the other, pushing in front of them an empty stroller. A half hour later we pass them again on the other side of the lake, and now the fatter of the two pugs is sitting happily in the stroller, looking all tuckered out from his big day, while his healthier brother trots along merrily. These people brought along a stroller because their pug gets tired.

          The most common dog in our neighborhood is easily the Corgie. Daily spottings and the proliferation of   Corgie puppy videos on YouTube has led to my inevitable love affair with those silly fat guys that look like the perfect sidekick for a gentleman about town. If we got a Corgie we have hypothesized naming him Mr. Tickles, and giving him a beret, but this will obviously (probably) never happen, like other hare-brained schemes to open a restaurant serving only potato dishes called PO – TA – TOES and so on. On any given day, a walk around Green Lake will net four to five corgies, a healthy smattering of pugs, golden retrievers, labs, spitzs, pointers, and all the other common ones. For a whole number of logical reasons we’ve decided we can’t get a dog until next summer, a general period of time I keep pushing further back. Walking around Green Lake while dogless can make your heart ache.

          We do see plenty of dogs that don’t make me envious, dopey little dogs bred long ago for specific purposes that have nothing to do with being a good companion. A man walks past us, holding the leashes of two cocker spaniels in one hand, pressing a cell phone to his ear with the other. He passes a couple walking a lab, and the two cocker spaniels suddenly lash out like beasts possessed, yapping and blathering, nearly pulling their owner off his feet. He mumbles some apology to the lab people and keeps going. The spaniels instantly forget their rage and trot with their long floppy ears drooping along.

This picture almost makes me want a Dachsund

          One of my neighbors back home in New Cumberland named Betty had two dull, tan cocker spaniels, Betsy and Daisy if I remember right. If you so much as looked at their front porch they would go to pieces, barking and smacking their slobbery faces into the screen door. I had a hunch that angry little dogs like these were meant for something specific. A search of the internet led me to see that Cocker Spaniels were bred for hunting Eurasian Woodcocks, fat little pheasant-like birds that are probably a lot more personable and friendly than Cocker Spaniels. I also found that Dachsunds were made for going into burrows and fighting badgers, and pugs were bred as accessories to Chinese emperors. I just don’t understand the appeal of the angry little bastard dog. To me a dog is an animal your wrestle with, that you slap on their butt and race to the end of the yard, not a snooty little thing that needs put in a stroller.

           I do not understand, but at least respect those obsessed with enhancing their bodies by punishing them daily, like the girl charging around the park who has easily lapped us twice, sweating buckets on a cold October day. I have never had the impulse to run until I fall over from exhaustion, and I probably never will. Green Lake is a place of worship for the cult of The Exercise. Hordes of the traditional followers using time-tested craft like bike and rollerblade flock here, but you also find those pioneers bringing waves of the future to our fair city. These things I will be forced to call fusion-craft, as part of their appeal stems from their cross-extreme-sport-genre-ness. In a single walkaround I encountered three things I had never seen before coming to Seattle.

          1.Rollerskiing. An elderly man in a skintight red and gray jumpsuit with a dynamite mustache easily in his sixties glides silently past us, utilizing the side of the path marked WHEELS : SLOW. Roller skis are cross-country skis mated with rollerblades, wheeled poles and everything. For the cross-country skier who just can’t wait for the snow, there’s roller skis!!

           2. Long-boarding with a pole. A small crew of two or three young dudes in sunglasses and backpacks cruise around a bend near the park’s boathouse, pushing themselves along with a big pole. To best describe the rush these guys may feel, I borrow some prose from gearjunkie.com author Stephen Regenold.

          “The tang stench of tar is in my nose. The street ahead is fresh and featureless, a snaking stretch of smooth asphalt put down just days ago by a construction crew. I am surfing on land, the wheels and wide deck of a longboard swooping downhill, carving polyurethane to pavement as I lean to check speed on a city street."

          Well put Stephen. So I won’t deny that longboarding is pretty fun, and that not having to move your feet and using a big Venice-style gondola pole sounds pretty nice. Kahuna creations, the Hawaiian company that makes these describe it as paddling on land, of surfing meets skateboarding meets snowboarding, the ultimate in extreme sports mega-fusion. I just don’t know what to think about this development. What new innovations can man hope to achieve, when such marvels are common place already?

            3. SUP, or Stand Up Paddle Surfing, also whats uppy, or suppy for short in certain circles. This is another Hawaiian creation, called Hoe he'e nalu in their language. This is basically the aquatic version of the longboard just described. SUP-ing has taken the Northwest by storm, you can see it all over Seattle, on Lake Union, Lake Washington, I even saw someone out in the choppy surf of Puget Sound. This just doesn’t look terribly fun to me. All the fun of being on a boat plus all the annoyance of standing up (really who likes standing up?) There’s usually at least one or two SUP’ers out on Green Lake, navigating between rowing teams and lap swimmers. A lot of them look like this guy.

          Then, there’s the classics. I cannot express any more affection and admiration for the man we saw UNICYCLING around Green Lake. Not unnicycling while juggling on a street corner next to an open hat filling with change, nor at a circus or carnival setting, but unicycling for exercise over a long period of time. I salute you.

          I don’t doubt that in December, a good throng of people will still jog or walk their dogs around Green Lake in total darkness, an outdoor-oriented community doesn’t shut down for something silly like winter. It will be hard to make myself stay outside as it gets darker and darker, and the folly of beginning a blog about parks in fall starts to dawn on me, but if that guy is still unicycling and pugs are still treated as the Chinese royalty that they are, I’ll make the effort.

Gasworks Park In September

The gray sky ceiling hangs low, bright enough to force squinting as I watch a V of geese pass up and over the lake.  I’ve found a nearly perfect groove between two lumpy patches of yellowed grass on the side of a hill.  Lake Union dotted with boats stretches out in front of me, the skyscrapers of downtown hung with patchy fog across the water.  At the base of my hill there’s a flat grassy space now full of people in black tights, fine-tuning choreography for some musical.  Their stereo plays a scratchy old French recording, the mademoiselle pining for her lost love in a tremulous soprano as dancers practice their cartwheels.

When the number is finished the performers give themselves a round of applause and there is much pattings-on-the-back. They begin the publicity portion of their practice session, dancers ambling up the hill, shooting mysterious faces to other park-goers.  A girl blows me a kiss and approaches, stepping forward with toes pointed, both dancing and walking.  She holds a stack of cards advertising the name and date of her play.  She asks me if I already have one. At that very moment I am chewing three water-crackers.  I smile sheepishly with my mouth full and make a guttural noise between gooey chunks of wheat.  She doesn’t understand my answer, and hands me one anyway before briskly dancing away.  These days I’m mostly beyond embarrassment.

Life constantly creates strange pairings.  In a public place full of people; like the park, street, or the bus, stopping for a minute to observe all the things happening at the same time is immensely rewarding. 

On the hill above me a father is explaining the science behind draw- bridges to his two identical blonde sons.  An escaped white balloon with a bell tied to its end drifts by me, just too far away to reach, up towards a gray blimp matching the sky bearing the logo of a local credit union as a young couple on a blanket rub their bare feet together and a sullen, heavyset woman walks by with her old floppy beagle and a swarm of black and white starlings are frightened from their fence by a passing boat shaped like a silver bullet that must have cost a fortune and here I am lying on a hill 2,724 miles away from my home and family considering the abstracts of purpose, illness, and what I should cook for my dinner.  What makes all this happen exactly as it does?

On the other side of the hill there are wedding photos in the works.  A tall man in a tuxedo kisses a woman in a shiny white and gold dress.  Three young people in jeans and sweatshirts circle them, snapping pictures on professional looking cameras with long lenses.  Other members of the wedding party mill about on the lawn. Several hold empty champagne glasses and don’t know what to do with them. 

A trail leads past the main pavilion with its playfully colorful and useless industrial pipes and out into the woods.  A single willow tree down by the water is surrounded by a square of chain link fence.  A sign from the city parks department say the spot is consistently high in tar. They are conducting a study to find out why. There are signs all over the park advising citizens to avoid swimming and by no means to eat any fish or shellfish caught from the lake.  Due to contaminants, the water is off limits. Back at the apartment, three or four days worth of greasy dishes are waiting for me.  These facts don’t seem to be overly related, but my brain thinks they are.

 The trail follows the shore past the quarantined tree, smaller paths branching off into the underbrush, leading to the backdoors of houseboats that look barely mobile and hardly sea-worthy. Further into the trees I am confronted by a huge rooster in the path blocking my way.  My annual viewing of roosters is pretty low, but here alone in the shady woods without proper context, this rooster looks fucking huge.  His feathers are a mix of black, brown and green, and the fleshy blobble at the top of his head is bright crimson. 

          He pecks at the dirt, scratching at it intermittently with his thick yellow legs.  I’m not close enough yet for him to care about me.  Is he the pet rooster of one of the house-boat-people? He doesn’t have a collar on. Would a pet rooster have a collar? The identity of this rooster is obviously unknowable, and I slowly approach him for reasons also unknowable.  He turns now to face me.  He scratches the dirt with aggressive purpose, like a bull soon to gore a fancy Spaniard.  A low, rumbling cluck, sounding more like a dog than a chicken finally warns me off.  I back away slowly and once he is convinced I’m not a threat, goes back to his mindless pecking.  I come across the strangest things when I’m by myself.

I’m sitting now on a flight of cement steps down by the water, notebook folded over my knee, feeling proud of myself for actually putting my thoughts down on paper.  Not writing makes me feel guilty, like I’m wasting all that money I’m still spending on college.  Writing about an angry chicken definitely counts as using my degree. 

On the platform above me an immigrant family is enjoying themselves.  There are a handful of adults leaning up against the railing, looking out towards the city as all the lights start to come on, having a heated debate in their native language.  Based on the color of their skin, the way the women are dressed, and the way their language sounds, they are probably Somalis, maybe Ethiopians I don’t know. There are quite a few East Africans in the city, there’s even a non-profit called Somali Community Services Coalition devoted just to serving their population here, maybe they’ll give me a job next year. Cross your fingers. 

The adults are speaking entirely Somali, but as the children run around and splash in the puddles I hear the occasional English word. As a completely useless mono-linguist I’m always impressed by people who can flow interchangeably and effortlessly between two or more languages.  These kids have two completely separate ways of relating to their existence, of describing everything they see and know. 

I wonder if they were born here or immigrated along with their parents? I am terrible at guessing children’s age but I’d say all three of them are between ten at the oldest and five at the youngest.  Maybe they need both languages to sort and make sense of their two vastly different lives, their family’s home across the ocean in Africa and now this strange new place.  I can only imagine what Seattle is like for someone from Somalia or Ethiopia, like being relocated to Saturn.  Their parents only have one way to express and understand their lives, one that I’m sure has large gaps in its understanding of a place so far from its origin.  They will look to their children to find the keys for unlocking this society unless they pick up English very quickly.  But then again, what do I know, maybe they love it here and are getting on fine, their fellow Somalis that came before them guiding them slowly and carefully to build for themselves a new life vastly better than the one they had before.  I will never know, because I can’t and won’t ask them, because they are strangers in the park.

   The light above the clouds seeps away and more and more people drift out of the park.  The sun is vaguely visible now hovering just above the Olympic Mountains way off west. I’ve been here almost a year and still have no handle on the weather, it shifts and moves amorphously, of its own accord. What I can tell is there won’t be a sunset tonight. I’ve lingered here long after most people have gone home for dinner. I see the brilliant pink and purple sunsets when I’m driving, when they are mostly hidden behind trees and buildings and hills, but when I come to the park and wait they hide from me. You can’t plan for them, they are only willing to surprise you.