The Quiet Park Remains Unchanged

This morning, walking around Bear Creek Park, I thought about how much this walk has changed since we moved here.

140th Street was two narrow lanes flanked by native alders and cottonwoods that met overhead, forming a quiet green tunnel. A narrow packed-earth path was the forerunner of the wide paved walkway that now flanks the busy four lane-boulevard.

In September 1992, I walked with and piggy-backed my five-year-old daughter. After passing the mushroom farm, we crossed the road to speak to a lone cow who stood in knee-deep grass behind a disused fence, munching on windfall apples in an abandoned orchard. We too filled our pockets with those small delicious Gravensteins. Later we sat on the porch and made applesauce.

The orchard and the old farmhouse with its hedged garden are gone; a Hindu temple now stands by a Korean church. Walking the same trail where I once saw an owl in a cottonwood, I now smell the lingering aroma of curry, hear the high dolorous sounds of temple music.

The trail bends and bends again, and I walk once more in silence beneath the trees and cross the new bridge. The early morning park is quiet, fragrant with the dank smells of dew-laden grasses. Beside the wide paved path, rabbits nibble, unmoved as I pass.

Natural vegetation gives way to lawn. As I pass the disused cross trail that led to the old bridge, I feel a tiny pang. That narrow wooden bridge, located right in the elbow of the creek, washed away one long-gone spring, cutting off that section of park from our side, and I still miss that part of the trail. Some kids still go to the creek's edge to play there; I see their bikes.

After crossing wide lawns, the trail follows the creek, lightly screened by alders and wild salmon berries now bearing their pale orange fruit. The blackberries are covered at this season with delicate pink-white flowers that belie their vicious thorns. The trail turns again, passes the wood-fenced track where other early risers jog.

I pass the playground, now empty and silent, and cross the bridge beneath the wisteria-covered wooden arch into the gardens. Beneath the large cedars, a few purple rhododendrons are still in flower. Mock orange is in fragrant bloom and the flower beds are rich with colour.

Once through the garden, I return to the boulevard, noticing how the trees and shrubs on the central median have grown tall. Again each double lane has growing trees on either side, reaching up as if they would arch across the roadway once again.