Thursday, May 21, 2015

West Park

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I thought I was going to get clever and show you a view of West Park from the sky.

I guess I sort of can do that, but this image is about five or six years old.  This is before the pond existed..........

They were re-working the park, to put in a bunch of underground water-storage tanks, as well as putting in the pond.  They were trying to make the park hold a lot more rainwater runoff than it had done in the past.  (I think those white circles, in the upper left corner, are water tanks, waiting to be buried.)

All of the fuchsia lines are now paved paths into the park.  There are also two entrances from Huron, but I'm not sure where they are.  The park is lower than either Huron or Miller, so all of those entrances have significant staircases down from street level.

The chartreuse is the pond.  You can see -- compared to the area of the park, there's not very much pond.  And yet it can support multiple mama ducks and families, muskrats, hundreds of fish, thousands (and thousands) of tadpoles.  The water, and the wildlife, bring people into the park.

The band shell has been there for a long time.

For those of you who remember ice skating in the park, the ice rink was where the ball field is.

Ten years ago, I avoided walking through the park, because there were too many young men just sitting around, partaking of their favorite intoxicants.

Now the park is full of families and women and dog walkers.  People make a point of coming to see the fish, or the frogs, or the ducks.

Whoever it was that had the idea to put the pond here -- it was genius.  Adding the pond has made the park hospitable to all kinds of benign visitors.  Bird watchers.  Photographers.  Little kids. 

Hooray.

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