Char and I took a walk in Arnold Arboretum today to celebrate 60 degree weather. Boy it was nice. We live right next to the park, so in literally five minutes we can get away from our apartment and enjoy the peace and quiet of an underused government property.
I love parks, because most people ignore them. When I was at Madison I’d go to Blue Mounds State Park, and invariably I’d be just about the only one there. There were gaggles of kids at the pool, but venture just a minute down the path and it would just be wind and trees and birds. See my old photos for pictures of the place.
Arnold Arboretum has a few more people in it, all walking their dogs or their kids, but mostly it’s empty. It’s not the large forest that blue mounds was, the trees are far apart and you can always hear the traffic. But compared to the parks I saw in Japan, which charged admission and were manicured to the point of insanity, it’s like a gigantic tropical jungle.
The snow was melting quite fast, and made very interesting patterns. The following is a screencap from a short video I took with my camera. The quality is shitty, but you can get the idea. The water flows under the ice and snow, taking little packets of air. These bubbles make cool patterns under the ice as they flow.
