May 27 2004, 04:32 PM O'Hara Park

A blessing in any urban environment is greenspace. Trees and lawn are always welcome to counter and punctuate the brick and stone and asphalt under the feet of modern city life. There is a history of philanthropy here (battles spring and neap over some of its sincerity), and we have some tremendous deeply treed spaces to thank for it.

The example of such space near me now has origins bound up with Mary Schenley nee Croghan, British Army Captians, elopement, April and September, and other goings on in kind. The land itself bears no scars of any of that. The wide spaces of lawn open up the sky, and the thick trees of the wooded paths buffer the noise and the heat of the nearby city.

It is in parts a kinkly, slopy piece of land, folded and crimped by time and stream. Sets of paths have piled up over years; at the bottom of some of the little valleys winds a ghost of a walkway, only seen easily as echos of paths surrendered between crumpling bridges of weather softened stone first put in place two turns of centuries ago. A time after that, deeper wider paths traced out routes a little up the hillsides, leaping across the valley bottoms on larger bridges built with stone darkened perhaps by the angry air of this place for much of the last century. They are even now putting down new paths as they refurbish the old and older ones. This generation may be the third of forth; I am unsure.

When we were younger we would charge down the sides of those valleys on foot, then struggle up the other opposite with the help of hands, all in the name of going in a straight line. These days, I stomp my way through the paths as I am meant to, in long looping curves that follow the hollocks around and back again. If I am smart, I bring a stick. The trails end up longer than I think, most times.

It is not just those on two feet that take to the trails, there are those who come to play on two tires as well. Some of the paths are for them alone, difficult to manage on foot even with a stout stick and a more deliberate pace. I take to these sometimes anyway, usually when I happen to be wearing a brightly colored shirt. Sometimes they thin down to almost nothing. Sometimes they go to hidden places. They are like secrets.

I almost always hear the riders coming in plenty of time to get well out of the way; the snap of the chain and the rattle of the gearings become more alien against the soft murmur of the forest as they approach, long before any movement can be seen through the leaves. Sometimes they pass like ships with gentle slowness, the front tyre carving careful path through the muddy ground. Sometimes, they pass in a frolic, with laughter and slight breathy air as legs dig into the gentle slope.

Sometimes, they pass like ghosts. They are bent over in a quiet determination of speed, fleeing unknown things through the whip and chatter of the grasping leaves and unruly ground. They breathe hard, pushing with the downward hill, until the path is yanked away and down further by the past furious efforts of the stream below. They shoot outward in an explosion of whooping and air, to disappear from view into the green.