Blog #4

10/19 Visit

On Sunday, 10/19, Aaron and I walked to Observatory Park together at night in order to be able to see the site at a different time of day. To me, the park felt much different at night. Instead of a green, bright, grassy field that is often filled with people, it was a big, dark, empty, area. The perimeter was illuminated by lights from the street and the many houses and across the park was the single building, the Observatory, which had lights outside of it. The middle of the field therefore seemed scary and, while I am not usually scared of the dark, I felt the instinct to turn on the flashlight from my phone.

I stopped myself, however, and reflected on the importance of light in nature and in society. Without the light, I could not see the colors of the park. The vibrant greens that were painted across the area from top to bottom during the day were now hard to make out. The leaves and branches of the trees in the distance blurred together and the color changing leaves that had my attention before had been so drawn to were now invisible. Seeing the park at this time challenged me to bring focus to other aspects of the park. Aspects that I had either overlooked during the day or that were nonexistent in the light. First off, I found myself to be paying more attention to my sense of hearing instead of my sense of sight. Without the bustling of people and cars, the rustling of the trees was so loud I wondered if that had ever been there before. How could I not have heard it? Also, the sky was so much more apparent to me. The sky was not completely dark due to both the time of day and the light pollution of living in the city, but dark enough to see the sea of stars that lived there. The stars ranged vastly from one another. While they all took on a similar look, they were various sizes and some shone brighter than their neighbors. Each trillions of miles away, but still shining their light onto the earth.

Nature is so full and detailed that it is impossible to take it all in at once. In visiting Observatory Park at a different time of day, this was highlighted to me because I was almost tricked into bringing my focus to new things. However, ‘new’ might be the wrong word to use to describe them. Most of these things have been here long before I ever showed up, I had just not been observant and detail oriented enough to notice them. I love the way all of the aspects of the park are constantly working together, but take on different looks at different times of the day. I see it as a dance, where the lead role is traded off between the multitude of things in the space. Seeing the park at this hour challenged me to see it, literally, in a new light and highlighted the living and working society that exists there. It runs at all hours of the day, no matter if people are there to witness it or not.

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