Laurelhurst Park

            Laurelhurst Park is the place I feel most at home. I often visit the Park walking on my way home from school. As you near 33rd traveling up Stark, you can feel things around you becoming quiet. The closer you come to the Park, the more the Modern World seems to fade from your mind. Taking your first steps on the muddied path, you feel your commitments to everyone slip away. In autumn afternoons, the wind pours through the park in a whistling stir, seeming to touch everything. Leaves dance down from trees like rain in hues of gold and orange at the coming of the wind. The silent energy of everything together builds up higher and higher until it seems the wild is moving as one. Then the wind slows, until finally stopping, leaving everything seemingly untouched. After it rains, the pine trees fill the air with their scent, and you can feel difference in each breath you take. In the spring the trees are filled with a choir of songbirds, all singing together in delicate harmony. After the long gray winter, the park is a rainbow of color as the trees start to sprout back to life with light and dark shades of green, and the rose bushes bloom with soft hues of red and pink. Your head becomes filled with the earthy smell of dirt as you continue down the path. Sitting by the lake, you can see nearly the entire park from one bench. The water reflects a soft picture of the opposite shoreline's trees, until it is gently brushed away by a passing breeze. Faded beams of light reveal the dancing dust in the air as the Sun sets behind the trees. Twilight slowly crawls by, until the clear night sky is revealed as an ocean of stars swimming in the crisp moonlight. The Light posts flicker on, their soft illumination matches the overhead moon. The starry light fills the pathways and the crisp cold air is filled with the sounds of crickets in the hills. Too often have my afternoons been lost observing the evolving beauty of this place.