Speaker 1: The bandstand. Haze was just lifting early April sun, drying
Speaker 1: the dew from the lawn. As I made my way
Speaker 1: along the usual gravel path, I liked the way the
Speaker 1: lights sliced through the laurels, the way the chill clung
Speaker 1: to my cuffs, the sound of my own steps, softened
Speaker 1: by young grass. Retirement should have dulled such things, but
Speaker 1: in truth it had only sharpened certain senses and habits,
Speaker 1: the urge to walk, to count birds, to nod greetings
Speaker 1: at regulars on their routines. If I was particular about
Speaker 1: my park, I suppose it came from those years watching
Speaker 1: over it, cleaning the bandstand, checking bins, pruning the old
Speaker 1: roses at the front gate, and fixing the hooks on
Speaker 1: the south fence. It was my patch. I round the
Speaker 1: bandstand and spot her, young, bright scarf, a flash of energy.
Speaker 1: Never seen her before, but I know the regulars and
Speaker 1: welcome the new She ducks through a break in the laurels,
Speaker 1: quick as a wren and vanishes. I pause, expecting to
Speaker 1: see her thread on to the next path, but nothing.
Speaker 1: It's dense, holly back there, as I recall, not even
Speaker 1: a muddy track. The laurels are so thick a squirrel
Speaker 1: would think twice a jogger. One of the lean ones,
Speaker 1: appears between the two sycamores near the east lawn, his
Speaker 1: stride easy, face pink from the cold. I watch because
Speaker 1: I planted the lower sycamore myself years ago, and remember
Speaker 1: thinking then there never be much space between them for
Speaker 1: anything except root and shadow. Yet he emerges almost right
Speaker 1: between the trunks and heads out through the far edge,
Speaker 1: somewhere there shouldn't be an exit at all. He nips
Speaker 1: off down a little lane one I'm certain used to
Speaker 1: be just briars, without ever glancing back at me. Down
Speaker 1: the way, a grandfather and twin girls materialize, giggling from
Speaker 1: behind the pond, hair wild shoes trailing leaves. The girls
Speaker 1: skip ahead, racing for the swings. He comes behind, pushing
Speaker 1: open a narrow eye and gates set deep within a hedge,
Speaker 1: rusted intricate, with a battered medallion at the top. I
Speaker 1: have never, in my decades here seen that gate open.
Speaker 1: Most days, it looks more like a memory of a gate.
Speaker 1: Its hinges so rusted over. I once tried auling them
Speaker 1: and gave up. But there he is, letting it drift
Speaker 1: closed behind him, not a care in the world. When
Speaker 1: the girls have run on, and the grandfather s searching
Speaker 1: his pocket for something to bribe them off the swings,
Speaker 1: I walk over to investigate. The laurels where the young
Speaker 1: woman went are just a wall of green, barbed with
Speaker 1: holly spikes. No opening, not even a fox's gap. The
Speaker 1: sycamore roots are as twisted and gnarled as I left them,
Speaker 1: no sign of a path where the old iron gate
Speaker 1: should be. I inspect the hinges still fused with rust,
Speaker 1: and the gap just wide enough for the memory of
Speaker 1: a shadow, not for a person to fit through. I
Speaker 1: shake my head, mutter, am I just forgetful in retirement.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a tricker the morning, but there's a tingle
Speaker 1: of something stranger, familiar, ground shifting just a bit. I
Speaker 1: walk on slower, making a new kind of mental note.
Speaker 1: How many exits do I actually see people using? Here?
Speaker 1: And now? As the morning rolls on, I spot a
Speaker 1: dog walker duck into a thicket I always thought impassable,
Speaker 1: And a couple waving good bye as they vanish behind
Speaker 1: a huddle of overgrown rhododendrons where there's no paved way
Speaker 1: at all. None of these a line with what I
Speaker 1: recall the main gate, broad and ironed the two side
Speaker 1: street entrances I'd locked and unlocked more times than I
Speaker 1: could count. Not a single one of these new exits
Speaker 1: lines up with my memory or the official gates I'd
Speaker 1: watched over with such pride. By the time I finish
Speaker 1: my circuit, the regular comfort of my morning routine has
Speaker 1: turned sharply curious. I sit on the bandstand steps, notebook
Speaker 1: in hand, that old leather bound thing I've hauled everywhere
Speaker 1: since my working life. In see are sketches of bird sightings,
Speaker 1: notes about garden repairs, a few thumbed pages where I've
Speaker 1: been counting something or other for the sake of order
Speaker 1: to day. I jot just one line, counted six departures,
Speaker 1: only three real gates. Makes no sense. Then I sit quietly,
Speaker 1: squinting at the baker's van reversing into the side street,
Speaker 1: wondering how the map in my head could be so faulty.
Speaker 1: If you'd ask me ten years ago, I could have
Speaker 1: sketched every path, marked, every proper exit, traced each rose
Speaker 1: bed's history. I'd rewired the lights in the bandstand myself.
Speaker 1: Yet this morning, the every day seems to contain gaps
Speaker 1: and slippages. I never learned to tend. I resolve quietly,
Speaker 1: almost sheepish, not to let it pass. The park doesn't
Speaker 1: get the better of me, not when I know every
Speaker 1: blade of it, Or so I thought. When I first
Speaker 1: started as groundskeeper, the park was something between a haven
Speaker 1: and a headache. A green square folded inside three residential lanes,
Speaker 1: its edges marked by houses with tidy gardens, an old
Speaker 1: bakery with sweet buns baking before dawn, and a crumbling alley.
Speaker 1: Behind the row of terraces. There was the broad iron
Speaker 1: front gate, which we kept locked at night, shining at
Speaker 1: either side with vine motifs so elaborate no graffiti dared
Speaker 1: linger two side gates, less grand faced onto cross streets,
Speaker 1: a blue painted picket on one side and a mild
Speaker 1: green arch on the other, both half swallowed by privet,
Speaker 1: dependably sticking in wet weather. Within the park's interior was
Speaker 1: a familiar patchwork, a looping walking path, an oval lawn
Speaker 1: for games and picnics, the duck pond, whose population I
Speaker 1: knew by names breeds and squabbles, and the proud oak
Speaker 1: I had planted my first year. A scraggly sapling In
Speaker 1: those days, the central bandstand, painted annually in institutional white,
Speaker 1: doubled as stage and goal post depending on the day's crowd.
Speaker 1: Our display beds, tulips in march, roses in June, a
Speaker 1: riot of lilies in high summer were my favorite workplace.
Speaker 1: I remember the meticulous way I marked which bulbs took,
Speaker 1: which suffered the city's unremarkable pigeons, and the local dog's enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Retirement for me was not a wrench. I'd stayed on
Speaker 1: as long as the knees and patience permitted. Now I
Speaker 1: walk most mornings, sometimes pausing to note a surprise flash
Speaker 1: of a gold crest in the yew hedge, or the
Speaker 1: sudden feverello of the witch hazel by the north fence.
Speaker 1: A notebook, once for official logs of paint orders and
Speaker 1: dead heading schedules, now holds sketches of odd fungi and
Speaker 1: the occasional plea from a neighbor. Look after missus Granville's camellias?
Speaker 1: Would you missus? Granville herself is a fixture, always steering
Speaker 1: a stroller or shepherding the grand children. Hair in a
Speaker 1: bun as soft and orderly as hawthorn leaves, She greets
Speaker 1: me with the same warm good morning mister Lewis every time,
Speaker 1: no matter the hour. Oh Mar, the h school cross
Speaker 1: country runner is a different breed, bounding, cheerful, trailing a
Speaker 1: cloud of competition behind him. In neon shoes, he times
Speaker 1: himself along the loop, often waving phone in hand, breath
Speaker 1: coming sharp and eager. Sylvia Saturday's sketchbook devotee sets up
Speaker 1: by the pond, her hair streaked with gray, but a
Speaker 1: laughter carrying like chimes across the water. She's drawn every
Speaker 1: corner of the place, swears the willow by the bog
Speaker 1: has a kinder face than anyone she knows most days.
Speaker 1: Eddie joins me, my friend from park days now Semma attired,
Speaker 1: still acting as the city's park supervisor in name, if
Speaker 1: only part time. We swap tails, a broken fence post,
Speaker 1: a batch of missing daffodils, the endless contest with moles.
Speaker 1: Eddie's memory for deadlines is as poor as his jokes,
Speaker 1: but his sense for the park is second only to mine,
Speaker 1: or so he claims. The park is cocooned by quiet
Speaker 1: currant bush spill from a row of old semis an
Speaker 1: alley marks the rear the wild edge, often overlooked except
Speaker 1: by pigeons and the odd teenager in summer seeking privacy.
Speaker 1: On the north wall, a mural faded by years of
Speaker 1: rain displays the city's parks and squares, their winding paths,
Speaker 1: painted blue entrances marked by hopeful gold stars. I had
Speaker 1: a fondness for that mural. Used to touch up the
Speaker 1: plints myself, always careful never to add or subtract a
Speaker 1: thing from the official design. I like keeping lists, always
Speaker 1: have unusual bird sightings, weather quirks, complaints about the grass
Speaker 1: too long. For decades, it kept my mind tidy, my
Speaker 1: work accounted for. It's a habit that, now, of all mornings,
Speaker 1: seems as useful for memory as for order. So it
Speaker 1: strikes me as no small thing to day when these
Speaker 1: casual observations, the girl in the scarf, the jogger by
Speaker 1: the sycamores, the grandfather emerging where there is no gait,
Speaker 1: nibble at my sense of reality. Suddenly my routine's solidity
Speaker 1: falls open at the seams. Another day, another sunny morning,
Speaker 1: but something in my step feels off. With notebook in hand,
Speaker 1: I pay closer attention, booking each departure, every entrance. Here
Speaker 1: as the bakery's delivery boy slipping out behind the tool shed.
Speaker 1: A gang of teens vanishing behind a now familiar privet.
Speaker 1: I chart each one, seeing that by noon, not a
Speaker 1: single soul seems to favor only the three gates I
Speaker 1: recall as official paths are opening, or at least appearing.
Speaker 1: To the jogger, Omar is running again, bright and fast.
Speaker 1: I watch as he peels off along the grass and vanishes,
Speaker 1: ducking into dense undergrowth I know to be thickly tangled.
Speaker 1: I've cut back privet there each spring, leaving the knots
Speaker 1: so impassable. I used to joke not even the local
Speaker 1: foxes bothered. But Omar slips through, bright as sunrise and
Speaker 1: doesn't emerge. I squint later, as I finish my lap,
Speaker 1: I see him waving as he jogs off down a
Speaker 1: little lane I swear didn't exist, a lane that should
Speaker 1: have ended in some one's compost heap. Driven by a
Speaker 1: sharper curiosity than usual, I shuffle over, feigning examination of
Speaker 1: the flower bed where I watched Omar goo. There's only
Speaker 1: a shallow depression in the earth, a faint hollow, no
Speaker 1: real trail, just pressed grass, quickly rebounding I stroll back
Speaker 1: toward the swings and bump into Missus Granville. She smiles, wrinkles,
Speaker 1: folding kindly. Lovely morning, isn't it it is? I agree
Speaker 1: you're early to day. Oh we came in the back
Speaker 1: gate by the bakery saves so much time with the pram.
Speaker 1: She gestures, matter of factly toward a corner hemmed by
Speaker 1: thorns and nettles. Stand always use that one, Lewis, Have
Speaker 1: you forgotten? The assertion knocks looser pebble In my mind?
Speaker 1: There is no such gait by the bakery. I've stood
Speaker 1: there unlocking and relocking, pruning every bush for decades. There's
Speaker 1: only chain link bramble, and the memory of a long
Speaker 1: gone compost shed. Is that? So? I try to keep
Speaker 1: my tone polite, She laughs. You'll get used to retirement, Lewis.
Speaker 1: Everything feels a little moved around when you're not the
Speaker 1: keeper of the keys. But as I walk away, the
Speaker 1: contradiction blooms in my mind. My notebook makes no mention
Speaker 1: of a back gate. The only records are the main
Speaker 1: entrance and side gates. Yet Missus Granville, sharp in all things,
Speaker 1: is perfectly sure. Just to check. I stroll to the
Speaker 1: park's central kiosk, a relic of nineteen seventy's optimism, displaying
Speaker 1: a city map under cloudy perspecs. The mural shows three
Speaker 1: gold star entrances, as it always did. No bakery, adjacent path,
Speaker 1: no secret lane. I trace my finger over each star,
Speaker 1: feeling a faint irritation. I question one or two others.
Speaker 1: A dog walker, a lad with a skateboard. Each name's
Speaker 1: a path or exit. I cannot place. Some mention the
Speaker 1: gap by the chestnuts, others the old orchard row. I
Speaker 1: dig out my records, running a finger along the list
Speaker 1: of complaints, calls for repairs, lost keys, always three gates,
Speaker 1: no more. As the morning draws on, something in me shifts.
Speaker 1: My decades of certainty. The small town's regimen of order
Speaker 1: now feel inexplicably porous. My own memory, the official maps,
Speaker 1: the stories of people who use this park every day.
Speaker 1: They all stand apart, each insisting on its own version
Speaker 1: of reality. What unnerves me is not the possibility I
Speaker 1: have forgotten, but the ease with which everyone else is
Speaker 1: so calmly sure of roots that never matched the map
Speaker 1: I carried. The contradiction sits inside me like a pebble
Speaker 1: in a well worn shoe, small but sharply persistent on
Speaker 1: my kitchen table, beside the faded flower catalogs in overdue
Speaker 1: gas bill, I open my old Field notebook again. I
Speaker 1: draw the park as I remember it, rectangles for the lawns,
Speaker 1: the bandstand, a sketchy oval, three neatly boxed entrances. Then
Speaker 1: with a red pen, I mark the other exits people
Speaker 1: speak about by the bakery, the laurels, the unfathomable lane.
Speaker 1: My drawing groves cluttered, uneasy, as if resisting my attempt
Speaker 1: to pin it down. Over the next several days, I
Speaker 1: make a point to walk at odd hours, early before
Speaker 1: the school run, at dusk while the bats are coming out,
Speaker 1: even after rain, when only the truly devoted venture out.
Speaker 1: Each time, I stop by those spots where someone claimed
Speaker 1: an exit or entrance, a brake in the hedge, a
Speaker 1: muddy gap, a rumored back lane. I try discreetly to follow.
Speaker 1: Once the bakery's youngest helper, a lad with ink stained hands,
Speaker 1: cuts through the roses and vanishes where there's only a
Speaker 1: wall of bramble. Another time, Sylvia herself arrives, waving a
Speaker 1: sketch book, stepping lively from the corner near the pond,
Speaker 1: where just last month there was only fence. I try
Speaker 1: to follow, pushing through branches, shoes wet with morning dew.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I find a faint path, soft earth pressed by foot,
Speaker 1: only to twist and end abruptly in a pool of shadow,
Speaker 1: or a tangle so thick it may as well be iron.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's nothing, no trace of passage, not even a
Speaker 1: disturbance in the grass. I try to photograph the stranger
Speaker 1: gaps once or twice. The pictures are smeared, a blurry
Speaker 1: suggestion of a gate or break in the hedge, but
Speaker 1: nothing you d wager on. Other photos show only green,
Speaker 1: ordinary unchanged. Curiosity prods me beyond mere witness. I approach
Speaker 1: Sylvia one Saturday, watching her sketch along the pond's rim.
Speaker 1: Do you walk in the same way every week? I ask,
Speaker 1: careful to keep my tone light. Oh no, she laughs.
Speaker 1: I like the old arched gate in the northeast, the
Speaker 1: way the morning sun hits. It's perfect for sketches, she
Speaker 1: points vaguely. I peer across the pond. There the bound
Speaker 1: is an unbroken brick wall crumbling at the top, spotted
Speaker 1: with moss, which gait I ask as neutrally as a
Speaker 1: man can. Right there by the willows, she insists, eyes
Speaker 1: warm in memory, always unlocked in spring. For her, the
Speaker 1: gate is real familiar. For me, there's only wall. I
Speaker 1: take to my old computer at home, hoping for sanity's rescue.
Speaker 1: On line maps, it turns out are no more settled
Speaker 1: than memory. Some show our park with three entrances the
Speaker 1: arrangement I know. Others, including a popular tourist site, mark five,
Speaker 1: or even place a tiny blue symbol at each corner
Speaker 1: for access points, totaling eight. On a cycling app, someone
Speaker 1: logged a route cleaning through the orchard gap, a path
Speaker 1: I have never set foot on. I download a few
Speaker 1: satellite images in some faint lines, possibly foot trodden, possibly
Speaker 1: storm scars, suggest paths cutting through the borders at odd spots,
Speaker 1: but the most recent official city image shows only three
Speaker 1: clear outlets to the outside world. When I take these
Speaker 1: odd findings to Eddie, my former supervisor, he only chuckles,
Speaker 1: you know how parks are. Fences go up, brambles close in.
Speaker 1: Sometimes folks make their own route. Maybe someone clipped a
Speaker 1: hedge when you weren't looking, But I don't recall ever
Speaker 1: missing such a change, not once in thirty three years,
Speaker 1: wanting something firmer, I walk down to the public worksteppo.
Speaker 1: They let me root through the archives, an airless room
Speaker 1: with blueprints in battered wooden drawers, each folder stuffed and
Speaker 1: leafed from decades of revisions. The earliest plan, faded and foxed,
Speaker 1: shows four gates. Next, a nineteen fifty seven plan marks six.
Speaker 1: A nineteen seventies diagram for playground expansion boasts additional access points,
Speaker 1: at least five, with a scrawled note more required. There
Speaker 1: are maintenance logs referencing repairs to West Wicket, though no
Speaker 1: such structure exis on any drawing. I know the city's
Speaker 1: records Clark a tired man with biscuit crumbs trailing his
Speaker 1: tie shrugs. Parks always get redone, sometimes they add a gait,
Speaker 1: sometimes they seal one. It's just how cities go. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't trust half of what's written down depends who's writing it.
Speaker 1: In the course of a week of amassed more contradictions
Speaker 1: than clarity. On the one hand, I have lived experience,
Speaker 1: keys and locks hedges, I myself trimmed. On the other,
Speaker 1: I have living witnesses, neighbors, dog walkers, children, crossing boundaries.
Speaker 1: I can't see maps disagree, blueprints shift, satellite images contradict
Speaker 1: one another. Folk are unconcerned. When asked, they shrug and smile,
Speaker 1: treating their own roots as the norm, their own gates
Speaker 1: as if they've always belonged. The oddness is there quietly,
Speaker 1: and so is my growing frostration. At times I think
Speaker 1: it's the city playing tricks, some collective misremembering. At others
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's simply me memory slipper, the world
Speaker 1: outgrowing the old keeper's certainties. But it's not just my mind.
Speaker 1: I see the distances shifting. One morning, the bandstand seems
Speaker 1: closer to the south path than the day before, as
Speaker 1: if the lawn has shrunk. The oak I planted years ago,
Speaker 1: always at the very edge, now stands a few feet
Speaker 1: further in between the ancient chestnut and what used to
Speaker 1: be the fence line. I am cautious with these impressions,
Speaker 1: telling myself not to make too much of tricks of perspective.
Speaker 1: But when I ask neighbors about such changes, more often
Speaker 1: than not they laugh, teasing Lewis, You're finally catching on
Speaker 1: This park loves to change shape, or we all got
Speaker 1: lost here once as kids. It's what parks are for,
Speaker 1: a mild sense of being left behind or outside. Some
Speaker 1: ongoing joke nips at me. It would be one thing
Speaker 1: if people disagreed, but instead each is utterly at home
Speaker 1: with their version. They call their own memory factual and
Speaker 1: respond to mine with gentle belief, as if I am
Speaker 1: the sole practitioner of error. Yet no two of them
Speaker 1: quite agree, and none of their versions match the city's
Speaker 1: plat or my own recollections. It isn't fear. The park
Speaker 1: isn't malicious, merely more complicated than I believed. The more
Speaker 1: I observe, the more it delights and baffles me. But
Speaker 1: beneath the delight, the need to understand grows persistent. The
Speaker 1: knowledge I thought I had mastered, the orderly lists have
Speaker 1: started to crumble at their edges. One misty afternoon, drizzling,
Speaker 1: I resolve that the real question is not how many
Speaker 1: exits the park truly holds. Instead, something stranger is at work.
Speaker 1: Why do people remember the park differently, each with their
Speaker 1: own firm conviction and root. How does a place fixed
Speaker 1: in earth and city plan become so fluid in every
Speaker 1: day use? I ring Eddy invite him for coffee at
Speaker 1: the bakery. Eddie, balding and bright eyed, shrugs off his
Speaker 1: coat and settles in opposite me, ug in hand. You're
Speaker 1: looking hunted, Lewis your ducks turning invisible? Worse than that?
Speaker 1: I say, sliding over my notebook, the scrawled maps, the
Speaker 1: list of exit claims, half a dozen photos, both clear
Speaker 1: and useless. Tell me how many entrances does the park
Speaker 1: really have? Eddie? He's quick? Five always five main gates
Speaker 1: two side one at the bakery, little wicket by orchard row.
Speaker 1: You've worked there longer, no only ever kept keys to three.
Speaker 1: Never saw a gate by the bakery, not once? You
Speaker 1: must have missed it. I lay out my stack of maps,
Speaker 1: online print outs, photos of hedgerows and walls. I describe
Speaker 1: Missus Granville's certainty, point out the discrepancy between records, physical evidence,
Speaker 1: and neighborhood ritual. For a minute, Eddie frowns, scratching the
Speaker 1: side of his jaw. Well, records are always a mess.
Speaker 1: People put up new gates, city closes them again. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's an old gate there bricked over, Or maybe people
Speaker 1: liked walking through and remembered it different. I challenge, will
Speaker 1: you come walk it? With me. We'll check each exit,
Speaker 1: every supposed one. No skipping. He grins, thrusts his mug aside.
Speaker 1: All right, Lewis, let's go map your ghosts. The walk
Speaker 1: is careful, almost ceremonial. We march the park's edges, checking
Speaker 1: every known gate, Maine Side, bakery fence, Orchard Lane where
Speaker 1: the dog walker claimed a secret way. We find only
Speaker 1: a matted patch of grass by the bakery, nothing but
Speaker 1: old chain link untouched. Yet as we circle the far side,
Speaker 1: we stumble on an odd, narrow path, well worn, muddy,
Speaker 1: a lively use suggesting feet pass here often. The path
Speaker 1: runs up to a stretch of pale fence, no exit,
Speaker 1: nothing but boards nailed firm. Yet as we stand, a
Speaker 1: woman with two terriers rounds the corner from outside, Emerging
Speaker 1: as if from thin air. She recognizes Eddie waves and
Speaker 1: gestures to nowhere in particular morning, using the old way
Speaker 1: out by Orchard Row. We nod as if we understand.
Speaker 1: As she walks off, I trail my hand along the fence.
Speaker 1: Solid but there's a give, as though the park itself
Speaker 1: is listening. Eddie looking less certain mutters didn't expect that.
Speaker 1: We finish our circuit on the bandstand, I close my
Speaker 1: note book, resting it on my knee. Eddie says, may
Speaker 1: be memories, the wrong tool here, or maybe the park's
Speaker 1: got its own mind for an an doubt. Night falls
Speaker 1: before we disperse, and as I head home the old
Speaker 1: sense of certainty has turned curiously poorous. I sit by
Speaker 1: the window, thinking not just about forgotten keys or maintenance errors,
Speaker 1: but about an uncertainty that seems larger than any individual lapse,
Speaker 1: something that weaves through the bones of the neighborhood. Maybe
Speaker 1: not memory at all, maybe something that can't be pinned
Speaker 1: down at all. Week later, clutching my latest sketches and
Speaker 1: a folder of mismatched maps, I attend the monthly gathering
Speaker 1: of the neighborhood's historical Society. It's held in the community Hall,
Speaker 1: a musty side room where local history lives in cardboard boxes,
Speaker 1: displays of black hand white class photos, and a few
Speaker 1: tarnished trophies from cricket matches. Long past to night, I
Speaker 1: bring my stack of print outs and a small voice recorder,
Speaker 1: determined to press the question. There's friendly chatter as the
Speaker 1: group settles, a mix of old hands and a few
Speaker 1: young volunteers, eager for something to do on a rainy Thursday.
Speaker 1: I open with my query, how many entrances did this
Speaker 1: park used to have when you were young? I pass
Speaker 1: around a few maps. The answers are anything but simple.
Speaker 1: Old Missus Price, sharp in memory, declares seven, at least
Speaker 1: one for every direction. But the sky Mum used to
Speaker 1: fetch us home by the Apple Lane, and there was
Speaker 1: a little eye gate behind the old rectory, though it's
Speaker 1: gone now. Mister Singh, who moved to the area in
Speaker 1: the seventies, produces a festival parade flier nine gates circuit.
Speaker 1: He reads runners to check in at each entrance. He
Speaker 1: smacks the page with a grin. We always had more
Speaker 1: than three, all fully signed. In seventy eight, I recall
Speaker 1: Elizabeth the librarian brandishes a photograph faded into grayish pollen.
Speaker 1: It shows children streaming through a line of gates, the
Speaker 1: sign above reading Eastwood Park Welcome. She counts with a pen,
Speaker 1: ending at seven arches before they fenced in the tennis courts.
Speaker 1: I think a low argument starts gentle but insistent. Each
Speaker 1: has a narrative that won't quite match the others. The
Speaker 1: mood is festive rather than combative. Everyone swapping stories comparing
Speaker 1: remembered routes, quibbling about the order of remove or addition.
Speaker 1: Some are adamant about the old orchard wicket, Others claim
Speaker 1: it was brick up before the council put in the swings.
Speaker 1: One man insists the back gate's ghostly impression can still
Speaker 1: be felt if the light's right. In November, I show
Speaker 1: them a city map dated from my early years, three
Speaker 1: clear entrances. The group laughs, teasing, never trust a city planner.
Speaker 1: It's good natured, but leaves me more unsettled than before.
Speaker 1: When I present my list of recent observations, entries and
Speaker 1: exits that don't align with any known plan, nobody finds
Speaker 1: it odd, merely inevitable. Parks drift about. One woman says
Speaker 1: that's what keeps them interesting. Later, at the library's archives,
Speaker 1: flipping through stacks of old maintenance reports and annual reviews,
Speaker 1: I find a scatter of inconsistencies. Some years work is
Speaker 1: logged on the north Gate, which has never in my
Speaker 1: time existed. Other reports describe the eastern exits being padlocked
Speaker 1: for safety years when I know there were only three.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the count's match more often, not frustrated but undeterred,
Speaker 1: I take the question online posting in the city's bird
Speaker 1: watcher forum, a local parenting group, the runners club chat.
Speaker 1: The replies pour in. Each regular describes a different definitive
Speaker 1: number and placements of exits that rarely overlap. Sitting in
Speaker 1: my small, cluttered kitchen, I lay out the full confusion
Speaker 1: spread before me, people's stories, photos, folders, overlaid maps, childhood memories,
Speaker 1: and civic plans. The contradiction is undeniable. My own experience,
Speaker 1: the city's memory, and the routine of hundreds all claim
Speaker 1: equal truth, yet cannot be tallied. For the first time,
Speaker 1: I consider a new possibility. What if this phenomenon isn't
Speaker 1: just a muddle of bureaucracy and human error. What if
Speaker 1: even institutional memory can't anchor a place whose boundaries shift
Speaker 1: with every telling, every footstep, every quiet assumption. Is the
Speaker 1: park itself, its form, its gates, its very air, a
Speaker 1: living thing of sorts, not just subject to but actively
Speaker 1: composed by the stories and needs of those who wander it.
Speaker 1: If the number of exits, the roots in and out
Speaker 1: are shaped by memory as much as by hedge or iron,
Speaker 1: what does that say about the nature of place itself?
Speaker 1: I stare at the maps, at my failing attempts to
Speaker 1: pin down a real version, and the question feels both
Speaker 1: unsettling and beautiful. How many parks have I tended without
Speaker 1: ever really knowing their shape? What I had in front
Speaker 1: of me that night was nothing as comforting as an answer,
Speaker 1: but something that felt even more alive. The parkers puzzle,
Speaker 1: living maize, fog of stories and certainty, no single line
Speaker 1: to be drawn around it. Maps, my own and those
Speaker 1: of officials, neighbors, and sketches overlapped, collided, contradicted. The sum
Speaker 1: didn't add up, and the more I tried to prune
Speaker 1: out the error, the more the wildness at the park's
Speaker 1: edges seemed to press inward through the cracks in the known.
Speaker 1: I decided, as something almost like resolve, to stop chasing exits,
Speaker 1: as if there was a final correct count. The question
Speaker 1: was not only how many gates or where they were,
Speaker 1: but why each person brought a different park with them.
Speaker 1: I wanted to see if, through enough careful eyes and
Speaker 1: diligent steps, some larger truth might flicker out of all
Speaker 1: the overlap, like a shape glimpsed only when you stopped staring.
Speaker 1: Head On the next morning, I took out my largest
Speaker 1: note book, one of the old council log books I
Speaker 1: had filched on my final week, Filled now with lists
Speaker 1: of roses that never bloomed and a scattering of pressed leaves,
Speaker 1: I drew a surveyor's kind of map, big and blank,
Speaker 1: then began to catalog every exit I'd seen, every gate,
Speaker 1: someone had mentioned, each rumored gap and remembered path. I
Speaker 1: colored each line green for gardeners, blue for Saturday walkers,
Speaker 1: orange for the runners, purple for the elderly who spoke
Speaker 1: of the orchard row, pink for the children who couldn't
Speaker 1: resist short cuts. Beside each I wrote a name and
Speaker 1: a date. Some exits, like Sylvia's beloved northeast arch, clustered
Speaker 1: for a week, then vanished from memory and map. Both
Speaker 1: others persisted a narrow gap omar used again and again,
Speaker 1: which at least three people swore was the easy way
Speaker 1: by the bakery, though when I walked it hedge greeted
Speaker 1: me unmoved. Within three days, the map looked as if
Speaker 1: some mild storm had passed over it. Lines zigzagged, criss crossed, gathered, disappeared.
Speaker 1: I layered sticky notes for perspectives that contradicted again, erasures
Speaker 1: for exits that came and went. The more I collected,
Speaker 1: the less the park seemed to hold still, But the
Speaker 1: pattern grew not chaotic, but alive, as if every path
Speaker 1: ever trodden might return with the right footfall. Curiosity strengthened.
Speaker 1: Consistency I'd once prized above all no longer seemed the
Speaker 1: highest virtue of this park. What if contradiction itself was
Speaker 1: a quality The place invited needed sharper tools, a fresh
Speaker 1: perspective not already knotted by memory and routine. At city Hall,
Speaker 1: chasing down replacement bulbs for the bandstand, I asked the
Speaker 1: desk clerk who handled the park's bills whether any of
Speaker 1: the new surveyors might have thoughts on the matter. The clerk,
Speaker 1: a brisk woman named Olma, with her hair in coils
Speaker 1: and reading glasses perched on her head, brightened. I've heard
Speaker 1: the stories. Neighbors always grumble about gates coming and going.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see what all the fuss is about,
Speaker 1: she promised, a surveyor's tape compass and all the accuracy
Speaker 1: a sideline anthropologist could muster. When Olma met me by
Speaker 1: the gates that Thursday, she already looked amused, you're the
Speaker 1: groundskeeper who can't count fences, she teased, unpacking a battered
Speaker 1: tripod and a heavy metal tape. Only when they multiply
Speaker 1: on their own, I said, grinning. We agreed to walk
Speaker 1: the park's edges, measuring each length, marking GPS points with
Speaker 1: her phone, pure scientific method. At the first corner, she
Speaker 1: paused notebook at the ready, here's the main gate, fixed official,
Speaker 1: where's missus Granville's short cut. We traced claimed exits as
Speaker 1: a gentle joke at first, but as we moved carefully methodically,
Speaker 1: a strange thing happened. At one edge behind the bakery,
Speaker 1: A gap in the stone wall had opened, small arched,
Speaker 1: just wide enough for a person to slip through. Olmah stared,
Speaker 1: Has this always been here? She shone her foon's torch
Speaker 1: into the shadows, photographed the chipped brick. I've walked this
Speaker 1: perimeter on my own, never seen a gap here. It's
Speaker 1: on no plan. She measured three feet irregular at the base,
Speaker 1: cool with recent shadow, we marked it on the map.
Speaker 1: By the time we finished our first loop, after a
Speaker 1: detour by the Chestnut a climb over slippery roots, the
Speaker 1: gap had closed, filled in with a waist high tangle
Speaker 1: of blackthorn Olmah pushed at the stems, frowned. This wasn't
Speaker 1: here thirty minutes ago? Did any one see us go in?
Speaker 1: We backed up, checked the place was empty save a
Speaker 1: few early walkers far off by the bandstand. She clicked
Speaker 1: through her photos. They confirmed the gap as solid as anything.
Speaker 1: She shrugged, laughing a little nervously. First time my measurements
Speaker 1: disagreed with my steps. As we circled other oddities, accumulated
Speaker 1: tracks appeared short lived. A faint footpath muddy at sunrise,
Speaker 1: vanished in dry midday. A run of clipped grass had
Speaker 1: a gate shaped hollow in the hedge. Only as we watched,
Speaker 1: new growth sprang in where the shape had been. By evening,
Speaker 1: there was nothing at all on the map. I stared
Speaker 1: at the kaleidoscopic sprawl of paths, thinking either we were
Speaker 1: losing our grip or something deeper was afoot. A fluidity
Speaker 1: nestled inside what ought to be, by right, the most
Speaker 1: fixed of landscapes. I interviewed others. A gardening volunteer, Sarah,
Speaker 1: told me her group had never once been given keys
Speaker 1: for more than the three iron gates, But when she
Speaker 1: was a teenager. She recalled all delivering a set of
Speaker 1: spares to the old man with the dogs who minded
Speaker 1: the southwest gate. No such gate now, nor mention of
Speaker 1: it in city logs. When I pressed, she grew faintly embarrassed, saying,
Speaker 1: I suppose it was just a short cut. People remember
Speaker 1: what they need, don't they. Neighbors corroborated one another, cheerfully,
Speaker 1: often contradicting themselves. Days later, one Friday, a man told
Speaker 1: me he always entered through the birch row. Next week,
Speaker 1: he shrugged, must have mixed it up with the alley
Speaker 1: behind his old house, or maybe the park just shrinks
Speaker 1: some mornings. I traced more exits into the note book.
Speaker 1: The multicolored lines writhed, faded, doubled back upon themselves, like
Speaker 1: the growth rings in a tree. Evidence of seasons, storms
Speaker 1: and slow invisible creep technology did not rescue me. I
Speaker 1: checked Google street View historical snap shots. One April from
Speaker 1: three years ago showed a tidy gate beside the bakery,
Speaker 1: metal painted cheerful blue July's image, same corner, only grass
Speaker 1: and brambles. I cross checked the city maintenance log for landscaping,
Speaker 1: no mention of any such gait within ten years. Every
Speaker 1: time the map neared coherence, it slipped again. Almah, as
Speaker 1: we met again to check our findings, brushed mud from
Speaker 1: her boots and said, it's like trying to survey a
Speaker 1: river bank during flood, only you're sure the river isn't moving.
Speaker 1: As we gathered our findings, I spent a rainy morning
Speaker 1: combing the City Library's closed stacks, seeking the very oldest records.
Speaker 1: A log book from the nineteen thirties. A crumbling thing
Speaker 1: ink faded near gray, caught my eye half way through.
Speaker 1: In a looping hand, some one wrote, let the park
Speaker 1: lie as it wishes. Paths will come and go. Best
Speaker 1: not to tie them all down. Earlier records gardener logs
Speaker 1: on brittle paper mentioned new and lost exits year by year,
Speaker 1: as if this was expected. Southeast wicket lost to brambles
Speaker 1: might return if footpath strengthens. Children's gap opened near west
Speaker 1: fence for summer. Not just tolerance of change, but acknowledgment.
Speaker 1: The line between temporary and permanent seemed less meaningful. I
Speaker 1: asked Sylvia to draw the park's shape without looking. She
Speaker 1: produced a perfectly confident map, five exits, including the willow
Speaker 1: framed iron gait by the pond, her favorite. I checked,
Speaker 1: but found only wall. She shrugged, told me, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. When I was young, it was round, almost
Speaker 1: an oval. Now it's square as a biscuit tin. Maybe
Speaker 1: the trees moved too. I wondered if she was teasing,
Speaker 1: but no, she held the memory without conflict, as if
Speaker 1: both versions had the right to exist. Seeking to test
Speaker 1: the matter, I distributed five blank maps photocopied from the
Speaker 1: city's file to five regulars, Missus Granville, Omar, Sarah the Gardener,
Speaker 1: a grumpy dog walker named Patrick, and young Lee who
Speaker 1: played violin by the bandstand on Thursdays. They all filled
Speaker 1: the blanks differently. Entrances dotted in different corners, paths that
Speaker 1: criss crossed or stopped at walls, lines that veered where
Speaker 1: others were straight. No two matched, not even in number.
Speaker 1: Joining a city planning session as a silent guest, I
Speaker 1: watched as maintenance crew leaders flipped through copies of the
Speaker 1: official map, each annotated with corrections. No, the contractor bricked
Speaker 1: this last year, one argued, No, it's always been like that.
Speaker 1: The consensus, when reached, was always temporary. I began to
Speaker 1: suspect the park's objective shape held little power beside its lived, shifting,
Speaker 1: used reality. Each visitor had a version constructed not only
Speaker 1: from the map, but from habit need and their own stories.
Speaker 1: With Olma's help, I decided to try once more for precision.
Speaker 1: We met just after dawn due on the grass slanting light.
Speaker 1: Olmah wore wellies and carried clip board, laser measure chalk,
Speaker 1: and a sense of a venture. One proper survey for
Speaker 1: my professional pride. She grinned. Half way along the west edge,
Speaker 1: not far from the old yew, we found something neither
Speaker 1: of us expected. A stone arch, nearly Romanesque, half embedded
Speaker 1: in earth and thick with wisteria vines. It looked ancient
Speaker 1: and rooted, mottled with lichen, utterly incongruent with the rest
Speaker 1: of the park's late Victorian fixtures. Almah stood back, You've
Speaker 1: been here forever, ever seen this? I shook my head.
Speaker 1: Never we circled the arch, its keystone bore an unreadable initial.
Speaker 1: The path beneath was well trodden crisp gravel, though no
Speaker 1: regular route led toward it. I stepped through the archway,
Speaker 1: feeling a chill, as if the temperature itself had shifted
Speaker 1: on the far side. We were in what should have
Speaker 1: been the north field, except the distance twisted, bandstand further
Speaker 1: than it ought to be, the oaks casting morning shadows
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction. Millia was there, the duck ponds glint,
Speaker 1: the ring of swings, but the entire space skewed and new. Olma,
Speaker 1: pulling out her GPS, frowned at the reading. The coordinates
Speaker 1: are off. Should be twenty feet that way. She gripped
Speaker 1: her surveyor's tape with white knuckles. How old is this
Speaker 1: arch really? We traced the ground, measured the span, took
Speaker 1: photographs in careful light. I ran my fingers over the moss,
Speaker 1: thick damp centuries in the making. We stepped back through,
Speaker 1: and the distance righted itself. The park snapped back to
Speaker 1: its habitual shape. The arch stood solid. We documented everything, walked,
Speaker 1: The perimeter looped again. The next morning, Alma and I
Speaker 1: came back to Remeasure. The arch was gone, replaced by
Speaker 1: a green tangle of laurel hedge and a shallow mud hollow.
Speaker 1: We stared speechless at the space. She looked at her photos.
Speaker 1: It's here in the image, but here it's not. I
Speaker 1: felt a thrill more fascination than fear. Is the park
Speaker 1: rearranging itself? Or are we seeing with shifting eyes? Later,
Speaker 1: late afternoon, we sat on the bandstand steps, surrounded by notes, sketches,
Speaker 1: and almos. Jumbled feeling of professional defeat, she repeated, more quietly.
Speaker 1: I can't pin it down. I measured, I photographed, I
Speaker 1: swear it was there. Maybe the park prefers not to
Speaker 1: belong to any one map, I said. The phrase from
Speaker 1: the old log echoed in me. Let the park lie
Speaker 1: as it wishes. Intent on understanding, I broadened my field.
Speaker 1: I spoke to a land use historian, doctor Kemball, hunched
Speaker 1: over maps in his attic flat, eager to untangle riddles.
Speaker 1: He shrugged, saying, parks are forever evolving. Footpaths come first,
Speaker 1: Then planners formalize what's popular. Hedges shift, property lines drift.
Speaker 1: No two plans agree for long. The landscape architect I
Speaker 1: met for lunch, poked at a salad and described the
Speaker 1: idea of desire paths worn along the ground by repeated use,
Speaker 1: sometimes sanctioned, sometimes corrected away. Most parks, she said, are
Speaker 1: less designed than they are discovered again and again with
Speaker 1: every generation. A psychologist friend mad who brought in the
Speaker 1: concept of place memory drift, that communities or even friendship groups,
Speaker 1: holds shared memories of places, which can sometimes overwrite official records.
Speaker 1: You think of the park as physical, she said, but
Speaker 1: a place is a kind of collective agreement between memory,
Speaker 1: routine and social use. It's rare that one version outlasts
Speaker 1: all the others. Chasing the original records, I found a faded,
Speaker 1: hand drafted plan from the park's earliest days, signed in
Speaker 1: fountain pen. In the margin, the landscape architect wrote shape
Speaker 1: flows with walkers and time, let entrances settle themselves. I
Speaker 1: filled notebook after notebook, layering drawings, sketches, testimonies. Some exits
Speaker 1: recurred several times in a row, then disappeared. Some memories
Speaker 1: were contagious. A friend's mentioned could seed a new route
Speaker 1: into my own next day's walking. Now Nowhere in my
Speaker 1: findings was their evidence that the park was malicious, nor
Speaker 1: that it aimed to deceive. Instead, I was confronted with
Speaker 1: a quiet, undemanding pluralism. Not just confusion, but a gentle
Speaker 1: willingness in both place and people to accept the layered,
Speaker 1: untidy overlap of stories. With all this in mind, I
Speaker 1: decided to gather it sketches, maps, transcripts, memories, and lay
Speaker 1: everything out as one might arrange a puzzle's pieces before
Speaker 1: finding a fit. On my kitchen table, paper covered every inch,
Speaker 1: colored marks, tangled photographs, scattered GPS co ordinates, Curling at
Speaker 1: the corners, I started aligning every account by date and
Speaker 1: by person. Each exit clustered around a time, a need,
Speaker 1: a person's preference. The northeast arch clustered around Sylvia's Saturday mornings,
Speaker 1: the Bakeriy's rear gap around Missus Granville's pram years, the
Speaker 1: orchard row for runners in the dusk. Never did one
Speaker 1: sequence remain stable for more than a week, sometimes only
Speaker 1: a single day. As I sifted, a new realization dawned.
Speaker 1: The park's shifting nature, its plurality of exits, its morphing boundaries,
Speaker 1: not only upset my old sense of certainty, but also
Speaker 1: revealed something far richer, a space whose reality grew out
Speaker 1: of the compounding of human need, habit, and memory. Some
Speaker 1: people described the park as an island of stability, their
Speaker 1: green lung in a gray city. For others, it was
Speaker 1: a short cut, a playground, a solitary path. The mothers
Speaker 1: strolled roots only pram wheels could carve. The runners found
Speaker 1: paths that cut all corners for speed. The children reimagined
Speaker 1: breaks in every hedge as portals. The elderly recalled old
Speaker 1: ways not visible but ashore as the earth beneath them.
Speaker 1: Each remembered boundary, each claimed exit mapped deeper than city plans,
Speaker 1: a kind of lived cartography, composed of emotion, practicality, nostalgia,
Speaker 1: and the unconscious logic that tells us where we belong
Speaker 1: and how we leave. If there was a cause, if
Speaker 1: the exits multiplied, vanished, or held depending on need or habit,
Speaker 1: not magic, not nonsense, but the slow sedimentation of hundreds
Speaker 1: thousands of walks, seasons, stories. It meant the park drew
Speaker 1: its shape from those who moved through it place as
Speaker 1: agreement pathur's memory made material lasting only as long as
Speaker 1: recollection held it, and so, like a story retold, the
Speaker 1: park slipped slightly to meet each new walker's map. The
Speaker 1: difference between this park and the city's rigid grid, I realized,
Speaker 1: was not confusion to be fixed, but a kind of
Speaker 1: mercy room for all those overlapping needs. I found myself
Speaker 1: sitting on the empty bandstand'st depths at dusk, the sky
Speaker 1: pale lavender, behind the chestnuts, my notebooks full of impossible, contradictory,
Speaker 1: beautiful evidence. I understood at last that I'd spent decades
Speaker 1: tending not a fixed patch of earth, but a place
Speaker 1: whose form was always the running sum of all who
Speaker 1: passed through and the stories they brought and left behind.
Speaker 1: Let the park lie as it wishes, the gardener wrote
Speaker 1: centuries ago. Perhaps the wisdom resonated the park's boundaries, exits,
Speaker 1: even its inner distances. These were a living negotiation, not
Speaker 1: to be fixed, but celebrated My care for the park,
Speaker 1: My work, my memory had not been wasted, but joined,
Speaker 1: woven into a greater fabric. Never meant to settle. The
Speaker 1: park wasn't lost without my certainty. It was more itself,
Speaker 1: more of a place for being recalled, slightly differently by
Speaker 1: every person who entered. The next morning, I left my
Speaker 1: keys at home. I walked with an openness, not checking,
Speaker 1: not testing, simply passing where my feet carried me. Each
Speaker 1: bend of the path, each edge of hedge, struck me
Speaker 1: as both familiar and new, a living thing not tamed
Speaker 1: by any single set of notes. Now that the goal
Speaker 1: was not to settle which exit was most true, But
Speaker 1: to honor the ongoing conversation between place and memory, my
Speaker 1: walks changed. I found myself expected. Children waved, joggers called
Speaker 1: greetings missus. Granville winked as she turned her pram down
Speaker 1: a lane I knew and yet didn't. Not quite. My
Speaker 1: experience softened, became participatory. I was not the park's master,
Speaker 1: but its companion, its rememberer and remaker. Not every morning
Speaker 1: brought a new gait, but most offered subtle difference. A
Speaker 1: bend in a moan path, a shift in how the
Speaker 1: sycamores cast their shade, a compression of distance between the
Speaker 1: pond and the swings. Instead of frustration, I found a
Speaker 1: growing delight, an eagerness to see what new configuration the
Speaker 1: interplay of stories would bring. When neighbors laughed at my
Speaker 1: overgrown map, I laughed with them, happy to be overtaken
Speaker 1: by the gentle plurality at the park's core. On a
Speaker 1: final walk before summer's rush, I closed my notebook for good,
Speaker 1: sitting at the edge of the lawn, where the bakeries
Speaker 1: scent drifted in sweet and warm across the grass. The
Speaker 1: sun shimmered on the pond children's voices tangled with the
Speaker 1: morning's first blackbird song. I paused, gazing at the patchwork
Speaker 1: of paths, formal, faint, memory, bound, or bold, and wondered
Speaker 1: how many other corners of the world, even in my
Speaker 1: own mind, must quietly shift and slip the moment I
Speaker 1: turn away, or the moment new need is brought to them.
Speaker 1: Maybe we never step into quite the same park twice,
Speaker 1: not because the world is fickle, but because every walker
Speaker 1: brings a new map, and some places are generous enough
Speaker 1: to change in return. And that is the end. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, and I will see you in the
Speaker 1: next one. Mmmm.