Technically, this is more like 1.5 miles.
Walking this always makes me yearn for a time machine, specifically so I can go back and slap (maybe physically, maybe verbally — you decide) everyone responsible for this destruction to our landscape.
I’m not talking about the artificial wetlands or even the foot bridge. Those both serve some kind of purpose.
Encasing much of an already-polluted river in concrete was a mistake. We all make mistakes, but do we learn from them?
The artificial wetlands were created to mitigate the CTfastrak project, so that has been an improvement.
These offer a place for deer to graze, and there is ample evidence of them here. Tracks in the mud. Tufts of fur. A few bones. A sudden flash of three galloping away.
Geese, hawks, and other birds use the land. Turtles can be found in brooks feeding into the Park River. The dream of unearthing the river in downtown is sweet, but I would rather see the stretch from Pope Park to Flatbush get even more attention. Remove the concrete basin. Plant more trees. Fix past wrongs.
In a time when travel out of one’s region is unwise, we can pretend that an outflow is a waterfall.
If you squint your eyes enough, you can pretend the shopping carts dumped in the Park River are lobster crates. Close your eyes. The highway can sound like the ocean.
If we can pretend that desecration of a river (of many rivers, really) was for the common good, than we should have no trouble using our imagination in other ways.
We can pretend that an abundance of pipes is somehow normal, and that the graffiti is the upsetting part of this picture.
We can pretend that the litter found just about everywhere happens passively, that nobody is responsible for placing it there.
I don’t like to play pretend.
But I do like turtles, and attempts to do better, especially when it comes to our environment.
When we talk about a return to normalcy, I hope we don’t mean what is pictured below.
