It’s been 10 days since I’ve written about my rides in Forest Park, yet I’ve ridden there every single one of those 10 days. Perhaps it’s the weight of summer, perhaps it’s because I’ve been into two very exciting books (finished the one and starting and finishing the other in that period – will start a new book today); perhaps I’m just being lazy.
What really moved me was that today, for only the SECOND time in all my rides in Forest Park, I again saw a raccoon. It was just a few days off a full year from my other sighting which July 1, 2004, just 5 days off a full year. In 2004 I came across a mother raccoon with three babies in the Jewel Box grounds. I titled this piece today “raccoons….” but I only saw one. However, she had large and clearly full teats hanging down, so I knew the young must be close at hand.
She was crossing the bicycle track at about 7 AM (just almost exactly the same time I saw the others in 2004). She was alone, but watching around her, coming out from some bushes. This was just about 100 yards south of the Union Blvd. entrance, just at the lakes where I always see the many turtles on their logs. I stopped and she stopped. No one else was close, but others were coming along the trail. I should have just ridden on, but I turned around and she took off into the open, running across the open grass toward the river about 20 yards west. That was not a good move, there was little cover, no bushes whatsoever and only a few trees, and she would quickly get behind one.
I was feeling badly that I had turned around and frightened her, but by now others were jogging past, but no one even noticed her behind a relatively small tree. They passed and she just had her nose sticking out watching me, so I headed off to give her time to get back into the bushes, and her young, before a large group of joggers crossing Union would get to here.
It was fun seeing her.
At the Union entrance, where the statue of General Franz Sigel stands, is the entrance to the short path that runs over toward the Muny. This is where I used to see the owls so often. That area has come on some very hard times. It is a swamp area and not connected to the running water of the river system. This year it has been overrun with some growth of (now) very thick green mossy stuff. I wrote earlier about seeing some small ducks in this pond leaving paths in the green moss looking like modernistic paintings. Now the moss is much thicker, the green deeper, but still a lime green. No ducks at all live there now and it gives off a very unpleasant odor. However, it does look like the park folks have been working there. Some digging is being done and such. I’ll keep my eye on this area for sure.
I always take this path and today was most surprised to see a biker sleeping there, having set up some sort of light cover with sticks, but it wasn’t any actual tent. I went by about 7:10 AM and came home that way more than an hour later and the biker was still sleeping.
I continued on over toward the Muny. It actually opened Monday June 20th, and I had been reporting on my growing concern whether or not the picnic tables coming. On the Friday morning before the Monday opening they still weren’t there. However, when I rode on Saturday the 18th they were there and I felt very assured. It is there, at the east end of the front of the Muny where they have the entertainment which Laverne spoke of in a note about a week ago. Without those picnic tables (about 15 of them) there would be no decent places to picnic while the musicians are playing their absolutely FREE SHOW before the beginning of the paid show inside. Lots of people come just for the outside show, have a picnic and then leave. Others come early, getting better parking in the bargain, and then stay for the Muny show as well.
Every morning when I get there the trash barrels are just crammed with trash, but sometime in the day they must be cleaned before the next evening’s show. Today was an exception, already by 7:30 the trash containers were cleaned and empty. However, the ones up at the back parking lot were still full when I had been by there ½ hour earlier.
Today I want to talk a bit about “The Immigrants,” as I call them. There are three sets.
The first set are three Bosnians, all in their mid to late 70s. Two women and a man, they are in the park almost every day it isn’t raining, even in the bitter cold of winter. The two women are both short and very chunky and simply love to talk. And they walk a lot too. The man is almost always with them, trailing along a bit behind, and when they sit on benches he generally sits about two foot away from the women on the same bench.
They do speak a bit of English, but not much and I’ve communicated with them better in German though they speak Serbo-Croatian among themselves. Their central place of “hanging out” is in the wet lands. The farthest SOUTH I’ve seen them in at Steinberg Rink, walking around the lake just west of it. Their two favorite park benches are on by the large water spray in the lake which is on the road that leads out of the park to the Chase-Park Plaza area. They love to sit in the morning sun, and are often in the park by 7 AM. The second bench they like a lot is up near the handball courts, on the bike trail, right along Lindell Blvd.
What must be shocking to many bikers/joggers/bladers who go by is that in very typical European fashion, when the women want to take sun, they just take off their blouses and sit in the sun in their very old-fashion pre-WW II type brassieres. I use that more old-fashioned term rather than the more modern “bra” since these are the sort you never see any more. Very old fashion sorts. Such behavior is extremely common all over Europe. I’ve lived in Vienna many times and in the Schonbrunn Gardens and even in the Stadtpark (city park) and other inner-city parks (the most elegant areas of Vienna), the older women sit in the sun in the parks stripped down to their bras. I’ve seen the same thing in Paris, Prague, Budapest, but not at all in London. Thus I’m sure these women wouldn’t find their behavior at all note-worthy. I find it a delightful cultural tidbit.
I have greeted them often, exchanged a few words about things going on in the park, but never really had a conversation with them. Thus I speculate a lot about who is who is this trinity. The obvious guess is that the man is husband to one of the women, but which one? It does seem that he sits next to the smaller of the two most often, perhaps always, I’m not sure. But, they could be sisters and a brother, just three friends, two women lovers and a male companion/friend and on and on. I love to imagine possibilities.
Actually in the past two days I think I got some much clearer evidence on this. Yesterday I came along and there were FOUR of them on the bench by the lake with the large fountain. A second man was with them, and the four (three quite large people and the new guy – same age group – is taller and thinner), were crammed onto a single park bench and they were deep in chatter. I love the sounds of their language, of which I don’t know a word. (I passed a young woman jogging today who was also deeply into a cell phone conversation in the same language.)
So, I was fairly sure these are two married couples, and the today I got what I think was some SERIOUS confirmation. I was ridding along past Steinberg and along the back path (east side close to Kingshighway hill) and over the two long wooden bridges in the wet lands. In the middle of the first long curved wooden bridge are some long wooden benches (people often sleep there), and there was a large group on the benches. It turned out to be the larger woman, the thin man who just appeared yesterday and two younger women, probably in their mid-40s who seemed so likely to be daughters. Two or three smaller children watching ducks. This gave all the appearance of a family, and the other two “regulars” the shorter woman and man I took to be her husband were not there.
I waved to the woman and she back to me.
Then, 100 yards up I came to the lake with fountain and there on the “regular” bench were the man and woman and a couple of younger middle aged women with them too.
Seems for sure to me like two families.
An hour later I did get a surprise. I was on my way home, back that same route in the opposite direction and there were the two women walking and chatting without the third, the “regular” man, and all along the area I rode were no signs of the four younger women nor the two men. Hmmmmm.
Fascinating stuff I keep imagining about who these folks are. The two women definitely recognize me. They don’t actually “wave” at me, but in gentler ways they “acknowledge” me in a way that don’t others passing by. They know I speak German. I could stop and chat, but actually I much prefer the mystery of it all, of just observing and gathering my little clues, creating imaginary tales for myself as I ride.
The second of my “immigrants” is also clearly Eastern European, but I never asked her that. I only had one very brief conversation with her and have only seen her three times.
The first time I saw her I didn’t speak to her. Actually I thought she might have been a park worker. There are a large number of park workers who work early in the morning carrying one of those sticks with a nail at the end and a some sort of large bag on their shoulder. They walk all over the park picking up trash. There are a lot of these folks, but I had never seen any one who wasn’t an African American, men and women. This woman was clearly European and had that Eastern European look. I realized she didn’t have the stick, but she was picking up things along the bike trail. I even circled round (discretely) to see what she was doing. She was gathering things, plants and such.
I just rode on. That was back in the very early spring. Then about two weeks ago I saw her again. This time she was in a well-traveled area with lots of other early morning folks jogging and biking by, and she was just gathering a handful of dandelions, so I knew I wouldn’t be any threat. I stopped my bike and asked if she had found some good ones. She was cheery and light-hearted and spoke English with a very heavy Eastern European accent. Our conversation was light and brief. She collects plants for brewing teas, making wine, medicines, spices and to eat. She says Forest Park is just filled with wonderful things and she collects them all over. I was so very impressed. I would love to get up the courage to ask her to let me walk and collect with her and to show me what’s what. I’d get a big kick out of that, but I wouldn’t think of being that bold. Unfortunately we live in times when a lone woman in the park simply cannot safely talk to a man. I only exchanged the few words I did with her because so many other were around.
I saw her the third time yesterday and she waved at me, smiling and she put a handful of some leaves into a smaller plastic bag, and then into her large shoulder bag. That woman simply intrigues me!
My final immigrant couple I’ve written about before. Last year I wrote some about an Asian man who led a group in exercises over by the bridge just next to the lake with the large fountain (where the three folks often sit). This man, and a woman of his own age – I would guess them to be younger than I, but only by 5-10 years, so perhaps in their late 50s, but giving their physical fitness it also wouldn’t surprise me if there were 80 and just LOOKED like mid-50s – do these extremely slow-motion exercises. It looks like martial arts movement in very slow motion, with leg lifts that astound me they don’t fall down, slowing raising a leg, curved some, but up above the shoulder and then straightening out the leg. That exercise must take 2 minutes just to raise and lower the leg and they never fall. That is, the man and woman never fall. Last year they had a group of 6-7, mainly Asians, but not all, and they weren’t nearly as successful.
They too are in the park most days and I’ve chatted with them a number of times telling them how utterly graceful and beautiful their exercises are, and this obviously pleases them very much. But, I never stop more than a minute or two.
These two are clearly in a somewhat different economic group that most of us. The two of them are very thin, rail thin, and short. I don’t know their country of origin, but the far east for sure. They dress so elegantly, in all black, reminds me of the golfer Gary Player of the 1960s-70s who dressed in black since he was convinced it gave him power. These two aren’t in simply cotton blacks, however, but elegantly tailored and beautiful material. These clothes must be made by them or for them just for their exercise. They don’t wear tennis shoes, but black slippers of some sort which remind me of ballet shoes, and their exercises are clearly as much dance as exercise.
These two smile so beautifully every time we pass. They jog the trail and they go in the opposite direction as I, thus we pass often and always greet each other. The jog at a rather impressive pace, and CLEARLY the fastest pace of anyone of their age, even if it is the 50s, yet they seem to be doing so effortlessly and their smiles come so easily as we pass and greet each other. They don’t huff or puff or seemly sweat! So elegant.
By the way, for 100% of the “regulars” and there are a hundred or so of us, people whom one sees so often if one goes so often, and one comes to recognize them – well of that group, 100% do their exercise in the SAME direction on the trail. Some, like me, go counter clockwise, others go clockwise. But I have NEVER seen one of the regulars going the “wrong” way for his or her pattern. We are creatures of habit.
I violate this rule in a very different way. I only use the trail sparingly. I use the trail from Hampton up to the top of Clayton Ave. where the baseball diamonds are. Then I leave the trail to go around Triple A, the Jewel Box, and the Muny upper parking lot, all in the “uplands,” and finally, instead of using the bike path trail along Clayton Ave, I go down the new paved path in the middle of the baseball diamonds.
Then I pick up the trail at Steinberg Rink and ride it all the way to High-Pointe when I’m ready to go home. In the meantime I ride most of my ride OFF-TRAIL, over by the Muny, around Grand Basin, up around the Art Museum, along the golf course, places like that. The bike trail is a 6 mile circuit and my ride is 15 miles, so I’ve carved out my own patterns.
So, yes, I’ve been on the bike trail each of the ten days I was silent and loving it. I ride as early in the morning as I can get myself out, and am always home before the heat of the day picks up. I would just so miss my daily rides.
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