My friend and I biked ten miles from the comforts of the main suburbs to get to this park. Neither of us had been to the park before, but we thought this would be a fun venture into nature. We never biked this far before because cars were by far the easier option. We chose a decently warm 80 degree day where the sun would occasionally hide itself in the clouds, so we didn’t feel the sweat until the sixth mile. The bike ride was easier than we thought it’d be because most of the sidewalks were paved making an easy, smooth ride. To make sure we weren’t going in the wrong direction, we occasionally glanced at our phones and made sure that Siri wasn’t rerouting us. As we got closer to our final destination, the signs of the suburbs slowly faded away, and instead there were less packed neighborhoods with houses that were more spread apart from each other.

We finally reached the dead end of this road, which I never had the chance to do before, so I could tell what was coming up was going to be special. As we rode along a pathway to enter the park, the trees kept getting greener and more densely packed together as we got closer. When we finally reached the end of the path, it seemed that the air was clearer and there were more oxygen molecules in the air. In the distance, kids were playing on the jungle gym, while the adults were gossiping underneath the picnic shelter; the scene reminded me of my carefree childhood. There were used wrappers and empty water bottles littered throughout the park, but for the most part all of this green seemed untouched. We veered away from this sight and felt the hard concrete surface of the sidewalk as we searched for a place to lock our bikes and the entrance into the trails.

To get to the trails, it wasn’t simply walking into the green shrubbery. It required going down a long bit of wooden constructed steps. There was a woman running up and down trying to take advantage of the fake incline. The density of trees grew with each step I took down. The stairs marked a dramatic descent into nature and with each step we shed suburbia’s prints on our skins and souls. I was ready to embrace nature with my arms wide open. The rest of the trail wasn’t simply manmade staircases though. It was natural; dirt-covered, speckled with rocks, and scattered with branches. It was nothing like the perfect, smooth sidewalk we were walking on before. I could feel some of the bigger rocks underneath my shoes, and I could hear branches crunching and snapping in half. As I thought about it, I realized I never really wandered off onto a path or place like this before. Even though this park was in the far corner of suburbia, nothing here remotely reminded me of home. I was in the woods. My very first time.

We didn’t need a map; all we knew is that we should keep walking and walking on this dirt path to find whatever we came here for. I wasn’t used to such silence, so I didn’t know what sounds to focus on. I tried to take in all of the green shrubbery around me and inhale the woodsy smell. I was sure there were bugs whistling around me, but my hearing wasn’t acute enough to hear them. I was probably even squishing tiny ants without even thinking about it. I did hear the birds chirping every once in a while in the branches above me. I was sure tiny fish were swimming below the surface of the creek, but I couldn’t see any. There were no pretty flowers, but there were smaller plants with uniquely shaped leaves. The only animal I did see was a duck (or some sort of bird) waddling next to an empty water bottle, unsure of what it was looking for.

We kept walking and walking. Maybe we thought there was going to be some sign of human civilization to guide us towards the right way, but my imagination of nature seemed to take a darker turn here. There was no movement or any fresh prints. No one would hear us scream if someone popped out from the bushes and grabbed us. No one would save us. Did the sky seem less blue? Mosquitos were gnawing at my legs, my arms, my ears, my face. Other unknown bugs were probably setting one of their six legs on my skin without me knowing. I was possibly stepping on bird poop and ruining my precious shoes. I couldn’t imagine what the birds or the fish were doing anymore, and I didn’t care. Every corner looked the same even though poles were marked with different numbers signaling which hiking path it was. All of these things were foreign to me, so I was far from comfortable. I was starting to think this is what “lost in the woods” meant. That initial feeling of excitement from entering the woods had faded away along with my rosy thoughts, but we kept trekking forward. It didn’t take long, but I was no longer completely comfortable with being in the woods anymore.

Somehow, we exited out from the thick brush and came across an empty parking lot. The trees looked less green than the ones we saw earlier and the grass was dry and yellow, clearly under watered. I couldn’t see how cars were able to get to this parking lot because there wasn’t a pathway to the actual roads. I’m sure this lot was abandoned judging from the faded yellow parking lines. The only sign of human existence was the small battered shed in the corner where I assumed a groundskeeper or a maintenance crew kept supplies. We kept walking in this parking lot because it was intriguing that this piece of land was left here in the middle of the woods, inside a city park. It was as if an architect thought this had to be here, so people could take a break from all of the trees and return to suburbia for a brief moment. People had to be surrounded by the familiar again.

Then, we saw an unusual thing in the corner. An old, wooden bridge. It was an abandoned bridge sitting on the grass to the edge of the parking lot. What was it doing there? We stared at the bridge for a second, tempted to walk away, but I couldn’t. I had to go on it. There was something comforting about the bridge – maybe because there was a similar bridge in a park near my house. Or maybe because I saw something like it before in a movie, a photograph, a painting. It reeked of familiarity, and I felt a little happier from seeing it. I walked across it, slowly gaining more confidence in its strength until I reached the end. There was no damage to make it unusable. In fact, it was nicely built and designed. What a shame for it to have been left here and used for nothing. I assumed it was a construction project in progress, but maybe it was one that was never meant to be finished. An unfinished project because humans already made their mark on this park. From the playground to the bathroom facilities to the empty aluminum pop cans to the empty water bottle floating in the creek to this parking lot. The park would be fine without another constructed item, no matter how beautiful it was.

There was nothing left to see here, so for the first time this whole trip, we turned around and retraced our steps. We didn’t do a good job retracing and found ourselves walking into an open field with endless, uncared for grass. Finally, the trees weren’t breathing on us and shrouding over us, and I could see the blue sky more clearly. I felt at peace. Maybe this feeling was leftover emotions from seeing the bridge because I finally saw something familiar in all of this unknown. The bridge was the park’s way of reassuring me that everything would be ok. Maybe the bridge was supposed to go here to make this field feel less empty and feel more like a place we’ve seen before.

Whoosh. “Excuse me,” a male voice said. My thoughts were cut short, and I screamed, unaware of what just happened. It was unexpected because my mind told me that we were alone in this field. When my eyes finally caught up to my brain, I saw a man biking quickly in front of us. I hadn’t even heard him coming from behind and neither had my friend judging by the look on her face. All of this immersion in nature and I still wasn’t truly immersed in my surroundings. I should’ve heard the churning of the chain, the tires grinding against the ground, and the heavy breathing from the man, but it didn’t register at all. I was still only hearing what was important to me, which were my thoughts about getting out of here. But, it made sense that it took more than a thirty minute venture into the woods to be fully immersed into nature, and it was foolish of me to think that I could do it in this city park in such a short period of time. People went on retreats for days at a time. A half an hour in one day was nothing.

I thought descending down those stairs meant that I was diving head first into nature and shedding the containments from the real world, but no I wasn’t. There were still aspects from the human world all around me and they prevented me from being fully immersed in nature. The biker was one of them. There was the lady jogging up and down the stairs, and all of the cars parked in the parking lot. I mean, we were in a human constructed park after all! Of course, there were going to be human elements, but I didn’t think they would be present inside the actual woods. The stairs. The empty water bottle. The posts marking the trail number. The more I thought about it, that dirt trail I first trekked on was probably made by humans. I was just fooled into thinking it was a naturally made path because I was so used to the paved sidewalk. At first, I didn’t think much of the one or two trees scattered near the entrance of the park, but were they originally there? Or were they planted to add to the beauty of the park? I started to question what was naturally part of the woods and what was placed into the woods by humans. When we were removed from nature for so long, it was easy to associate the first “natural” thing we see with nature (ducks, trees, whatever), but looking closer, it wasn’t only nature because human-made things were still around the corner. That parking lot in the middle of the woods proved this. Those wooden stairs proved this. The bridge proved this. Many times, there was some sort of human element sitting right beside nature, whatever it was.

After that biker scare, we finally made it out of the field and out of the woods, but I was greeted by something that surprised me more than anything I saw so far. I didn’t even know how to describe it: a huge oval structure with really tall, curved walls. The sign read, “Velodrome,” a track for bicycle races. The velodrome made me feel a little warm inside because the only time I saw something like this was when I watched the Olympics. Immediately, I associated feelings of excitement with this structure, and it made me feel more relaxed about being in this park. But, this huge structure still weirded me out because why would this be here in this park? Jungle gyms, bathroom facilities, volleyball nets, picnic tables, I understand, but this huge… thing was startling.

I was sure part of its purpose was to attract people from all over to this faraway park tucked in the corner of the suburbs. The designers of this park weren’t sure if the woods and the other “amenities” were enough, so they threw this in to attract even more people. I was sure it worked, and I imagined crowds of people gathering around and watching the bike races. It was probably one of the reasons that the biker was here. I guess for people, untouched wilderness wasn’t enough. There always had to be some mark of humanity, and ever since I first entered, it was there. The jungle gym was entertainment for the kids, the volleyball net was fun for the family, the picnic shelter was a retreat for the adults, the velodrome was for the athletes, and the dirt trail was for the adventure seekers. These items evoked powerful emotions because each of these things connected to our memories. I remember the joy from playing volleyball with friends, the happiness from sitting on the swing set, and the delight from eating good picnic food. I didn’t realize it at first, but just seeing these things when I first entered the park made me more confident about entering the woods. The same happened when I saw the bridge and the velodrome. They made the unknown less terrifying. These human-made objects made the whole place feel less empty and above all more comfortable. It was easy to assume that these were bad things because they made the park feel less like nature, but they actually made the park a more welcoming place for everybody whether they were a nature lover or not. The stairs at the entrance of the park added to the park’s beauty, and each step I took down made me more excited for what was to come. That dirt trail might have initially been made by humans, but the woods and the animals embraced it by making it their own with rocks and dirt. Even if it was made by humans, its origin had become unrecognizable. Whether those trees were planted or not, they were a part of nature now, and just by looking at them you couldn’t tell if they were planted or naturally grew on their own. Just because there were all of these human constructed items didn’t mean this park wasn’t nature. I didn’t even notice these constructions until I thought hard about it. The human world and the natural world had a way of melding together. Nature and the human world coexist all the time and this park was proof of that.

Lost in my thoughts, I checked the time, shocked to see it had been three hours because I thought only thirty minutes had passed. Even though I saw so many human elements in this park, time was the one thing that wasn’t present. Somehow time didn’t seem to exist in my mind because I was intrigued by my surroundings instead of focusing on what I had to accomplish next. While there was always some sort of human element in this park, time didn’t mean much if we didn’t let it. At least that was one human element that we had some control over. Since time wasn’t always a ticking reminder, this park made the perfect escape for humans. There was so much beauty that I never once itched for my phone because everything was so new and mysterious to me.

A space didn’t have to be pure nature for it to be beautiful. It didn’t have to be pure nature for something to be considered a place for humans to go take a break from suburbia, because it was hard to have a place that was so untouched. Human elements gave us comfort and reminded us of the familiar when we faced uncertainty. We thought back to memories of what those objects meant to us, and in that process we felt more in tune with our surroundings. While we wanted to be in untouched nature, sometimes there needed to be this balance between the human and the natural world to make us feel comfortable, but we could still shut off some parts of the human world if we made a conscious effort. I think we found what we were looking for after all of this time in the park.