Murray Park

The park is sprawling, laid out over a hilly green. A creek divides it, rushing with brown waters supporting a full cast of the blackest ducks I have ever seen. Their chatter can be heard between breaths as I circle the park; its pattern that of gossip. Canadian geese graze along the banks, leaving their signature green and white-tipped crescents along the pavement. There is a strange creature who walks, or waddles, among them. A fat white goose. He is a sturdy looking fellow, with a white mottled plumage, and the same shade of bright orange on both bill and webbed foot. He looks very much at home among the more subdued shades of gray and brown that mark the other geese. There is something dominating in his presence there, among the meek geese along the creek banks. He is more alert to man. A guard goose. He will approach a passerby, cover half the distance between them as a demonstration of bravery and willingness to fight, then unhinge his bill and hiss. It is a small but distinctively ominous sound and it is enough, I think, to keep most of us walking on.

Just beyond the territory of the great white goose is a little shaded copse where for some reason photographs are taken, constantly. The photographers come equipped with tripods, complicated looking cameras, even lights and the white reflective ovals that look like the disembodied wings of fairies. Here a family sits crouched amongst the rubble along the creek bed, uncomfortably holding their smiles. The fading light mottles their shoulders with the shading of tree branches and leaves. Often there are scores of people in matching clothes, usually all white or all black. 

The question raised by the volume of photographers and subjects here is an interesting one: Is there such a paucity of scenic backdrops in this city that this particular park stands out? It is a handsome park; even grass flowing as waves over the hills; sage brush and spruce showing off green and blue; box elders ancient and imposing as dinosaurs; the craggy peeling bark of the crab trees (they are the witches of this place, pedaling their hard bitter fruits), the tumbling creek and stately pavilions…yes, it is a handsome place, but if I found myself suddenly in need of some portraits…I can’t say this place would come to mind.

At least a bride each night, the black shadow of nearly invisible groom at her side. Men are all but invisible on wedding days, even their own, even to their own mothers. The bride is suffused with this glowing white that radiates from beneath the dress, like scalloped waves…you are not meant to see anything else, the eye is drawn to white, away from black.

But here and there the couples pose, she is straight-backed and round shouldered, fully aware of the transformative powers of a wedding dress, its ability to pluck nostalgic chords in the hearts of women, to incite a respectful kind of lust in men...and the two of them together posed seem somehow insulated in their little frame, perhaps it is her light forming a shield around the two…there is something eternal about it. Maybe it is just the weight of ceremony and tradition, and has nothing to do with the individuals involved, but you look at this scene and it stands out somehow, you can’t ignore it. You can’t help but smile at the brides and young grooms, posed along the creek, or beneath the pavilion, her maid of honor holding fast the train, pushing it into frame. The image itself is more a picture than a living thing, even before the shutter has opened and closed. They are living for the picture in such moments. This habit we have or trying to immortalize if not ourselves than that at least our words and deeds, our lives, is as human as our procreation, and equally dubious. What care have we of future desert wanderers, kicking over stones to find relics of the past, our past. Will we be any more alive?

This is the park I run circles around on desert evenings, thinking of home, wherever that may be.