Pioneer Park

I went to Pioneer Park today in Stillwater and read some books there, and when reading, discovered two worthwhile and interesting poems.  It's clear to me that gathering thoughts around me for the coming school year has been important, and today was no exception for this current habit.  In addition to 'Keep Calm and Carry On', I MUST have 'Witness' available for the blustery days in February when I wonder what the heck I am doing every day teaching middle school. 

Witness

Sometimes the mountain

is hidden from me in veils

of cloud, sometimes

I am hidden from the mountain

in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,

when I forget or refuse to go

down to the shore or a few yards

up the road, on a clear day

to reconfirm

that witnessing presence.

- Denise Levertov

Somehow this reminds me to pay attention.  And it's the poetic version of remembering a calling.  The woman who wrote this poem was a civilian nurse in London during the bombings in WWII.  I got this from a book of poetry about teaching, submitted because remembering a sense of purpose clears away fatigue and distress, and sometimes it takes walking a few steps to a shore in front of you.




The other poem I found in this same book today answered my earlier question about being human, no matter what year the calendar holds.  It's Walt Whitman, and it's about people in New York in a current time and 'generations hence'.



From 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry'

Flood-tide below me!  I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west - sun there half an hour high - I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose...

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;

Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half and hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

It avails not, time nor place - distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd...

- Walt Whitman

I walked, no, sauntered, throughout my town this afternoon, and it was one of the nicest days I've experienced all summer.  It was solitude and not loneliness, and there was a perfect breeze to keep me company as I read at Pioneer Park.  To get there, I walk past old houses that suggest earlier times and logging industry success (quite the success) and then there is the space I always crave in the view of the sky and the water and the land. 

Pioneer Park is tucked up away from everything on the north hill in Stillwater, but you can see the Lift Bridge on the St. Croix from almost any bench in the park, and the look of the town from above is truly quaint.  From this view, Stillwater looks like a village.  There's the courthouse on the south hill, looming above everything else, and lots of church steeples dotted throughout the trees.  Sometimes hot air balloons fly over the town.  And there are Victorian houses everywhere. 

When St. Michael's rang the tower bells today, and I said to myself, "This is why you live in a small town."  Because a provincial life like the one I have is soul quieting and good.  It's like a postcard in the winter (and very scary to drive through since every road really is a giant hill), and it's in the fall that I am the most conflicted because I want to watch the sun play across the view at all times of the day, but I also have to teach.  On my birthday every year I go to Pioneer Park and sit on the bench and read with coffee before school.  It's an almost perfect place to be. 

Sometimes, on other days besides May 20, I go there, early, early in the morning, with coffee and a book, and just breathe and wake up a little more.  That's when you see dog walkers and people exercising in the park.  At night there are picnics and kids running all over and on the 4th of July absolutely everyone is there because it's the best view of the St. Croix and the sky for the fireworks.  On the weekends there are weddings and proposals.  I saw it....a proposal, I mean.  It wasn't the actual bending down on one knee moment, but it was right after that.  There I was, and there they were, and they were having a major life moment together.  Awkward.  But that happens when you live in a destination location.  People want to get engaged where I sometimes eat lunch.    

Once, a few years ago, I was sitting on a bench by the main path in the park when an older couple stopped me and asked if I would take their picture.  They were celebrating a wedding anniversary (50 years I think) and they told me all about the nice dinner they had just had at the Lowell Inn at the bottom of the hill with their entire family.  They also talked with me about squirrels.  A squirrel ran by, and they stopped to look at it and then talk about it in a mildly exasperated way.  I loved them.  Before they came by, I had been feeling lonely, and after that, I didn't feel lonely anymore.  So people celebrate engagements AND 50 years of marriage at Pioneer Park.  I think this is very classy.

I used to bring my classes to this hill when we taught in the downtown location, and we'd have class up there instead of in a dark, windowless classroom.  There was construction for a parking ramp going on across the street anyway....some days they could barely concentrate.  So we'd trudge up the hill and do our work there.  One time, I made the kids stop and look out at the landscape before we went back down the hill again, because it was spring and I knew that our beautiful new building in the country would be great, but we could no longer walk to this view. 

Out of nowhere, I got super reflective about that, and vocal about it, and some of the 8th graders wrote me off (no surprise, but whatever) and then some just DIDN'T.  And I had a cool moment with them.  One kid in particular took this moment really seriously and DID spend a few moments studying the view and thinking ahead.  And now, when we meet in the new hallways and he's taller than me and driving and way beyond that 8th grade moment, it's still what I think of when I see him. 

But, just me, tonight, without the students....tonight, everything looked purple and blue across the sky and  I could see that it's the haze in the view, the up close and far away all coming together, that make perfect pictures so elusive and this place so magical at any time in the day.  You can take a big panoramic view of the place, and it shows the St. Croix Valley, but it often doesn't catch the haze.  I do tend to avoid the shots of close up inspiration because usually it's found in someone's front yard.  And it's weird to take pictures of someone's front yard, even if it's really beautiful and right next to Pioneer Park.  

I stretched out in the grass and read books for a few hours.  I pretended I didn't have cares in the world.  And it was a perfect summer day.  PERFECT.  Something unrepeatable, and I knew it, so I stayed until it was hard to see the words on the page.  I tried to remember what it was like to feel a breeze against my skin and revel in wearing a dress and sandals and traveling light, just carrying a few books, walking past the hydrangeas and hearing the crickets that tell me it's late August and fall is just around the corner.