Sunday, February 7, 2010
Field Observations in Audon Park
Through my primary lens of political science I viewed the park as a great place to gather and to think about every day life. Audubon Park has great paths to walk on and baseball and soccer field to play on. Parks are very important to a city. It gives people of a metropolitan area a place to walk around and have fun in the fresh air and trees. It is very important that people help preserve the park for future generations to enjoy. The park was just awarded $5,000 in a grant from the Association of Zoo Horticulture to restore the bird island that is in the park. Park officials have estimated that the island has been eroding away at 2-4 inches in the last three months. My secondary way of looking at the park would be though an environmental lens. One thing that concerns me is the tress that the park had to cut down to have the bike path and the golf course. To have the Audubon Park we had to destroy part of nature to put a path down so people can walk on hard sand and water and not the dirt that is under the path. I wonder how many beautiful oak trees they had to cut down so we would have the park that we see today? Another thing the concerns me is all the pesticides and fertilizer that goes into the duck pond from the surrounding golf course. I wonder the effect that has on the ecosystem of the park?
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I think you touch on an important question that many skim over when looking at parks: is this nature? Most city residents see it as an example of a "natural" setting, if not exactly "wilderness", when compared to their typical surroundings. But in order for the park to exist when surrounded by streets and buildings, people have to play a role. Humans must make a (huge) impact on the area in order to keep it as any semblance of nature. Behind the appearance of natural order is a strictly controlled environment. Most of the grass found in Audubon Park isn't native to the area. As you said, some of nature (trees, etc.) had to be destroyed in order to make room for the bike path and other structures which the people in charge thought necessary to entice others to utilize the space. If the area of land occupied by the park were simply left to its own devices, in its true natural state, would anyone bother to take the time to walk through the resulting overgrown field scattered with trees? The pesticides you mention flow into the lagoon and make even more chemicals necessary to prevent major impacts on the species living there. The fountains are one instance where function and aesthetics coincide: they add to the beauty and allure of the park, but they also serve to provide an otherwise rather stagnant pool with oxygen. As contradictory as it may seem, it looks like, in this instance at least, it is necessary to control nature in order to preserve it. Keeping parks around hopefully reminds or inspires those in the area that such areas (and their truly wild counterparts) are worth saving.
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