Claudia Exercise 3

I came across it by chance. It was a way I haven’t walked for years. The woodiness, the shadiness propelled me forward. A park bench. Somewhere between 95th and 93rd street in Riverside Park, this simple, small two-person bench for me represents and materializes nature. In a row of many benches which line the concrete walkway, facing the traffic of the West Side Highway in the distance, backed by dirt, trees, grass and wood (a Manhattan nature), this particular bench represents a familiarity, a comfort, a pause, an escape into nature. As I sit down on the bench, I feel as though I am back in high school, all my associations with and memories of this space worn into the wood of the bench. The countless hours I sat here, sheltered from the freezing winter rain or the blazing summer heat by the arching tree above, have created a material imprint in both the park bench itself and also in me--- I have left a part of myself here, and I have taken a part of the bench, of Riverside Park, with me.

From the age of ten until I moved away for college I was a professional dog walker. I started out just walking my own dog and his parents (who lived on my corner and whose pregnant owner didn’t want to be yanked around by two large golden retrievers in the snow and freezing rain). As more and more people saw me, a young girl, controlling three large dogs, word began to spread around the neighborhood and before long I had created a lucrative business, offering an alternative to the adult, more expensive (and less friendly) dog-walkers: the slogan on my business card read “twice the quality at half the price.”

By high school I had my regular daily clients (as well as the occasional rainy day walks). Every day after school, I would walk to pick up Jasper, Shilo and Gracie (all in the same building) and my own dog, Tex. With my motley group of dogs collected, a rotweiller-german shepard-lab mix, a beagle, a small yellow terrier and a golden retriever, we would make our way to Riverside Park and to our bench. The bench had become part of the daily routine of our walks: a break from the playing, from the pulling, from the pacing on the grass. As soon as I would sit down, Jasper and Tex walked to their hole behind the bench—a continuous project of digging, eating dirt and rolling around--- while Gracie and Shilo jumped up onto the bench next to me, staring at their larger friends below.

The bench, this space, represented then and refreshingly again now, a pause in my day, a time when I could be alone with nature, the hissing traffic absorbed by the grass between me and the highway, the concrete of the pavement softened by the enveloping trees and reseeded lawns. While not the conventional interaction with nature, not the picturesque natural landscape or lush verdant forest, in the urban setting of Manhattan, this bench served for many years as a material connection between me and the natural landscape of Riverside Park: the tree above the bench, blooming with the spring time cherry blossoms or with its thick barren branches, protected me from the more violent nature of hailing rain or summer heat; the dirt below the top soil, turned up by Jasper and Tex, revealed a hidden rich darkness unimaginable from the ground-level dirt above; the aroma of the freshly-planted grass, protected by wire fencing, masked the odor of the uncollected dog poo across the way.

I am five years older now; I have changed; I have grown. I look behind the bench, expecting to see Jasper proudly eating the dirt of his dug hole. Jasper and Tex are not there---they have been replaced by another dog in the distance playing ball with his owner. But the bench remains the same; its ability to absorb and reflect nature still remains the same; and the way I feel as I sit on the bench has not changed. Nature had gone through its cycles: perhaps it is a different bed of grass from the grass I had sat next to for all those years; perhaps the tree has lost a branch or two. But the essential element is the same. And I too, though I have grown up and gone through many changes, even without my group of dogs, feel at that moment I could relate to the Claudia of age 14---what I felt, how I felt on that bench is the same now as it was then.

Posted at Mar 31/2008 10:56PM:
Elisa: I am still trying to picture a fourteen year old wielding four dogs...wow, dogs usually take me for walks. I really liked that you included animals in your discussion of nature - we tend to focus on the botanical or vegetal aspects of the natural environment. Perhaps this is because this sort of nature is "fixed" more easily and thus become sites of memory.

Posted at Mar 31/2008 11:44PM:
Heidi: Your opening paragraph was oh so deliciously Virginia Woolfian -- we leave pieces of ourselves in the things we love and they impress themselves upon us in turn. It was useful to think about a pivotal object like a bench functioning as a sort of mediator between the urban and the natural. Perhaps it would be interesting to think about the way in which benches, observation decks, and other features designed to facilitate communion with nature position us in respect to the natural world. I would imagine that your bench had a nice view of the river, it was carefully situated beneath a tree, was surrounded by landscaping, and so on -- is it possible to identify strategies behind creating spaces for humans in nature (even if we are talking about nature once removed, in an urban context)?

Posted at Apr 01/2008 11:36AM:
Carissa: I found this piece to be extremely refreshing. I particularly enjoyed how you went into detail about this bench and the impact it had made on you throughout your life. When people percieve of a "sacred landscape" they often think nature (rolling hills and mountains). Here, you have explained that's not always the case. In a way your individualized experience and the realtionship that you formed with this spot made it sacred in an urban setting.

Posted at Apr 01/2008 12:36PM:
keffie: Many of the pieces you have written for class so far address that some element of repeated performance works to produce a connection for you. I wonder how we might incorporate this into our discussion of sacred spaces. Does repeated interaction with a place increase its ability to hold meaning for us (whether it be sacred or otherwise)?