A Land of Opportunity

Today I saw the first Indian plum bush that broke into full bloom, and I also saw a significant amount of new garbage.  When I am in the park, my forest and my church, I often struggle to direct my thoughts toward the positives.  At every turn in the trail, I am faced with reminders of the bad decisions of people resulting in harm to the park, with no lasting benefit to the perpetrators.  I have a million reasons to be angry, but I don't want to be an angry person.  I don't want to give those people control over my mind, which is in part what they seek with their deliberately thoughtless acts.

So, I paused a good while to admire that first blooming plum, I picked up some of the trash, and I decided to leave it for another day to come up with ways to prevent people from vandalizing my church.  The plum tree was in the middle of the slope, north of the stairs.  I had been watching most of the plum trees for weeks, waiting to see which would be the first to pop.  I had not been watching that particular shrub, nor had I even noticed it was there until it was the first to bloom.  I won't try to photograph it, since it is in the middle of the fragile slope, away from the stairs.  I will wait for the trail-side plants to bloom, any day now.

As I have said previously, it was a mistake to make this land into a park in 2005.  The ecosystem would have been much better served if dozens of homes had been built on this land and healthy forests away from the city could have been spared from development in return.  Since it is now a park, and development is not an option, then I will try to help the forest contribute to the overall ecosystem as much as possible.  Certainly, this forest, with its soil over 8,000 years old and its healthy trees, can provide much-needed ecological services to local species, human and otherwise.  Where this forest could really benefit the rest of the ecosystem would be in the fields of education and culture.

Right now, I would estimate that 10% of the visitors to the park come here to enjoy, respect, protect, and celebrate nature.  50% seem to come here for exercise, to walk on the trail and stairs.  25% would appear to come to the park because it is a place where no standards of behavior can be enforced.  This 25% likes to use the park as an off-leash dog park, a place to use illegal drugs and consume alcohol and tobacco (where they are supposedly prohibited).  A portion of this 25% comes here specifically to inflict damage, knowing they will never, ever see a police officer or any sort of enforcement in the park.  Another 15% come here to walk their dogs in a safe and legal manner.  10% don't particularly have a reason to be here.  They come to the park because they are lost, to meet someone, or just because it was there.  In our current culture, the smallest minority of park visitors come here with the intention of appreciating and admiring nature.  This is based on seven years of observation.  If others have a different view of the intentions of park visitors, I would like to hear their perspectives and the reasons for their conclusions.

If Eagle Landing Park is to have an impact on the environment, it could best do so by changing those percentages mentioned above.  That is the goal of this biography, to make others love the park as much as I do.  As I was walking through the park this evening, trying not to be angry at those who abuse public property for a slight and fleeting benefit, it occurred to me that Eagle Landing Park is a place where you can choose who you are, who you want to be.  It is not Nature, like the wilderness you can find when hiking in the mountains, but it is a proxy for nature.  It is a local interface with nature.  This park is a place where the individual can decide if he wants to be one of those people who preserve and enhance nature, or if he wants to be a member of the group that deliberately destroys nature faster than her ability to heal herself.  I can choose whether to spend my time worshiping my little ecosystem, or being angry at all those people while not changing their minds.  Others who come here, especially the 25% specifically seeking this space as the vacant lot where misbehavior is permitted, have an opportunity to choose a new way.  They can choose to become contributing members of society and help protect the forest.  Or they can choose to continue causing pointless destruction that does not benefit them in the long run.  Visitors to the park have a chance to atone.  They have an opportunity to choose who they want to be, destroyers or protectors.