Ode To My Favorite Place In The Whole Wide World
Since March 2020, my local park has provided me with relief and refuge. This is dedicated to my favorite place—when the whole world was falling apart, nature kept me grounded. Here is a collection of pictures from January to December 2021.
January 24th 2021
Dusk breaks gently over frostbitten wilderness; once again, I am here. I walk loops around the park, listening to the low moans of the dying greenery. January sunlight peeks from behind the grey masses of clouds, white peaks of dirtied snow. The circular lung-like splitting of the trees line the walking paths.
I am reminded of the two faced deception of January; of a lost Christmas, of my fading endurance, the waning of hope for better times. I am so angry with the whole world, but it is snowing here. The snow bleaches my reddened cheeks. I am practically begging for the August sun once more, to sink myself in the heat of Summer and forget the state of me.
March 7th 2021
I’m here. It’s my birthday. The sun sets and burns orange. The clouds wispy, thinned out across the horizon. But this sun is a betrayal, my knuckles are inscribed with inflamed cracks. It is so cold. My cheeks are pinched with the fear of Tomorrow.
The day after I took this photograph, we went back to in-person school. The evening of the seventh was a restless one—I had that same excitement I used to be full of, aged eight, the night before a school trip; my clothes laid out, packed lunch waiting downstairs, water bottle full. Burgeoning with happiness, full of hope—a much needed force.
June 13th 2021
Summer. Green upon Green upon blue skies and camel gravel. I can feel this picture. I can smell it.
This was the month of nothingness, an empty space I nestled into. School had finished over a month ago, and I was mourning the loss of the familiar, whilst welcoming June with open arms. It was so warm on this day, I could hear the fizzing in the air. Almost as if the oxygen particles were running into each other.
It was beautiful.
November 12th 2021
I was sat on the bench, with a stupidly overpriced coffee in my hand. Once again, I was stunned by the beauty of the trees. How they grow and grow and grow. And change—relentlessly, every single season.
During November, I was at the park every single day. Clearly reflective of my mental state, I was teetering on the edge.
November 17th 2021
It was finally nearing the end of the year. It had felt like 2021 lasted seven years, but I remember when I took this picture I thought about how fast the year had flown by. This isn’t a revolutionary thought; we all think about this at the end of each year.
Perhaps it’s a testament to how we all need to slow down and take in what happens around us. Even during the peak of the pandemic, we all became obsessed with busying ourselves with somewhat pointless tasks.
We wanted to obscure and blur our memories as much as possible, disassemble Time into small chunks, our days consisting of: runs, Zoom quizzes, banana bread, movie marathons, iced coffees.
December 10th 2021
I love this photograph.
The orange leaves cutting through the biting blue of the sky, trees filling out the image - even far into the distance. Even though I had taken this same walking path every day since March 2020, I remember how the atmosphere felt different on the 10th of December 2021.
I was seeing the park with fresh eyes, perhaps a mini-rebirth, on the cusp of a New Year.
December 31st 2021
The Grand Finale.
These loops in the park allowed me to pretend that each day is disconnected from the one before. Because here there was the familiarity of mud, the squelching of wetness beneath my feet, there was soil and so there was Earth.
I remember feeling unsettled on the final day of the year. Perhaps the fog, the mist, and the cold air was some omen, some foreshadowing of 2022. But, sometimes, mist is just mist. Nothing to be afraid of. This is our Earth.
Cover Photo by Rojbin Arjen Yigit. Edited by Caitlin Andrews.
