Shiona Sommerville

Field Journal

I think about what brings people to the park.

I think about the marriage proposal, the violinist, and the audacity of love,
the young man reading Camus because he wants to understand,
the giraffes in their 2-storey winter home,
kindness as a kinesthetic act,
what one says when one feels safe.

I think about the ecstasy of dogs,
the pilot walking without beacons,
the insanity of tobogganing,
a young woman whose tattoo I admire, though she is having it removed,
skaters, and angels, and wings.

I think about the last time I brought my children, now grown, to this play space,
the mustachioed man who was of another time,
the moment the snow day call went up on the hill,
reeds tamped down to make a bed,
routine, rhythm, and rhyme.

I think about what grounds us.

This ongoing project explores the expressions and activities of people along the Emerald Necklace, Boston’s seven-mile park chain. Honoring the vision of designer Frederick Law Olmsted, this work celebrates parks as sanctuary spaces, which offer, in Olmsted’s words, “enlarged freedom[s]” not permissible in the confines of the built city alone. Born over a century and a half ago as a gift of respite, this third space remains just as vital today.