Maggie's Park

Since we went back to the apartment and have become cliff dwellers (never thought I’d be one of those) I wondered if I was going to be okay with that. You know, I like my space and especially that outside, peripheral kind of space – nature, squirrels, birds, trees, grass – all the good stuff. Initially, it didn’t seem too hopeful – at least not as far as I could see. While the surrounding area and the area in general is pretty and there are lots of trees everywhere, it still struck me as pretty urban. Looking out the livingroom window gives me a nice treeline view but that was about it.

Having a dog in an apartment means that you do a lot of walking. Happily, the man really loves the little runt so he started taking her out in the mornings so I could either sleep in a little or just wake up a little more slowly, stumble into my clothes and sip coffee. Soon, I began to notice that these little excursions took longer and longer. References to the ‘park’ across the street were plenty and I was a bit curious. Whenever I looked across the street, all I really saw was a stand of trees and I guess I figured that was all it was. But Maggie’s utter exhileration when she returned home from one of her park jaunts was intriguing to me, so I resolved that I would take her to the park myself to check it out.

So, off we went… the tunnel of trees you see in the above picture is a sort of ingress into the park. I was impressed. I’m not sure the picture really expresses the sort of magical sense you get as you walk under it, through it. They are set up on an embankment, steeply sloped on either side. Being a dog, Maggie can manuever the incline without a thought, me, not so much. So, gingerly I tippy-toed down the embankment to the left and we came into a park a really lovely park that was so much more than I ever thought would be there. In fact, it is almost like being in another world.

Perhaps it is reminicient of parks of my childhood years, with wide expanses of lawn, picnic tables, countless trees, gazebo’s and walking paths. A sort of nature expanse in the middle of urban living seems to sound right.

Maggie was very anxious to show me around and since the man lets her run free without the incumberance of a leash, she was less than patient with me as I kept her tethered and admonished her for dragging me through the place, tripping and stumbling half the time. Maggie had some serious sniffing to do and I was clearly impeding her progress.

She knew all the right pee spots and which way to drag me at any given moment. Should anyone have the nerve to come and disturb our peace (it’s such a big park that you really do feel that you have it all to yourself and feel a little startled when you discover someone else is actually there) she would bark her most ferocious bark, signaling they should back off from her turf.

After that first trip to the park and since then Maggie’s park has become my park too. I look forward to taking her there – to just be in the nature space, to feel like maybe it’s just a really big front yard for our little apartment that we occasionally let others use. Whenever we take Maggie out, she always tries to drag us that way – it certainly has become hers in her eyes. And really who could blame her?

UPDATE: So a couple of you have mentioned snow and ironically enough we got some this morning and I took a few snaps – here’s one:

How’s that? 😉