The Park: A Pandemic Year

April 2020

    We found the injured hawk early on in the pandemic—back when we still felt hopeful about how this would all turn out, back when we dared think it would be over in just a few months. Or I did, at least.

    My husband Scott and I had walked in the park behind our house nearly everyday since late March. There’s a paved trail that circles past a playground and picnic area, basketball courts, tennis courts, and a soccer field. The park serves residents in my mostly white, middle-class neighborhood as well as the more diverse, working-class neighborhoods on the other side of it. In nice weather, soccer teams practice, and teens play basketball. One summer a few years ago, a Black dance team practiced each evening on the basketball court, 90s hip-hop blaring from a boombox. 

    I’d seen hawks in the park before, flying low across the open space even when it was noisy with people. Once, I came nearly eye level with one perched on a soccer goal post. It barely glanced at me as I passed.

    Last spring Parks and Recreation closed the playground and took off the basketball hoops. The parking areas were closed, though walkers and runners could still use the trail. Scott and I especially liked to walk through the park’s more natural areas, where the trail veers off the main park to loop past the county extension office and an alternative school. Both the extension office and school have vegetable gardens in raised beds, and we’d stop to check on the progress of greens and herbs poking up. The redbuds had finished blooming in the native plant garden just off the path; soon there’d be black-eyed Susans and coneflowers.

    My favorite spot in the neighborhood that spring was the patch of woods between the extension office and school. Even now, there are still piles of wood chips all around the perimeter from when Parks and Rec cut the trail, and it always smells like damp wood and humus. That spring, you could hardly hear any traffic on the main road a few blocks away. Even though the wooded area is just a couple of acres, for a little while you could escape and focus on the wildflowers blooming, the sound of a woodpecker drilling into a dead tree.

    We were on our way out of the woods when I spotted the hawk. Its soft tan and gray feathers blended so well with the mulch that I didn’t see it until we were nearly on top of it. “Stop,” I said, my arm out to block the path, and we stood there watching it. We circled it for a better view. It was standing in a puddle of water, taking little sips, one of its wings held out from its body at a strange, L-shaped angle.

    The day before we’d seen a hawk in that same area eating a robin. It had been so disturbed by the sight of us, it had picked up the bird in its talons and carried it off to the top of a tree.

    Was it the same hawk? We watched this one for a long time, and it didn’t move—just looked at us with its red eyes.

    “Let’s keep going and check on it when we circle back,” I said. Wouldn’t it be nice if we came back to find the hawk had flown?

. . .

May-June 2020

    All through May, we walked. In the yards and gardens: peonies, kale, oregano. The park opened again. We saw a few cautious soccer practices, kids spaced out like traffic cones in six feet increments.

     June came, and with it the bee balm in the native plant garden. We began to notice trash near the woods: plastic cups and bags littered the sidewalk, and empty candy bar wrappers skimmed the grass. A lone women’s sneaker, scuffed but fairly white. There was almost always a Save a Lot shopping cart parked nearby. It was too buggy to walk in the woods, so we stuck to the paved trail. The trees and brush had grown up, blocking the clear line of sight we had in early spring. If you peered closely enough, you could see—wait. Was that a tent? Tents? A clothesline? 

. . .

April 2020

    The hawk was still there when we returned. We watched a few other people walk or run past, oblivious. A few feet away, a man loaded mulch from the piles into the back of his truck, avoiding eye contact as if he were guilty of something. 

. . .

July 2020

    Who were they, the people living in the woods? Once or twice I saw a couple walking in the park wearing boots and loaded down with backpacks as if they were about to hike the Appalachian trail. The woman carried a baby on her back. A few times, we passed a young man in dirty jeans belted tight over his hips, belongings stuffed in plastic bags. His sneakers flapped as he walked. “How’s it going?” Scott asked. “I’ve been better, man,” he said, face a cheery mask.

    On the neighborhood Facebook page, people reported seeing needles in the park. Human excrement near the woods. Can’t they even dig a hole? they wrote. My children play there! Mow it all down! Call the police!

    This was at the height of the racial justice protests. Black Lives Matter signs were popping up like mushrooms in my neighbors’ yards—we had one of our own. I say this not because the people living in the woods were Black—everyone I’d seen and thought might be living there had been white—but because it surprised me, seeing so many vitriolic reactions in my seemingly liberal-leaning neighborhood.

    Scrolling down further, I saw one voice of reason. They seem to keep to themselves, she said. They need help. Our councilmember entered the conversation and said she was contacting the city’s homeless outreach team. Well, OK, then, I thought, logging off.

. . .

April 2020

    Scott called a wildlife rehabilitation center, and the woman who answered the phone asked so many questions that I began to feel hopeful. Yes, they could take the bird, but they couldn’t come get it, she said. We could bring it in ourselves or see if animal control would do it. They often did.

    It was a Saturday afternoon. Would anyone even answer the phone at animal control? They did. More questions. The man on the phone told Scott to get very close to the hawk and see if it moved. The hawk just looked at him, wing outstretched. The man said someone was out picking up another animal and would be there after she finished. We tried to give directions, but with no specific address, we weren’t sure they’d find the bird. “Tell him we can wait,” I said. Scott’s phone was losing power—he gave the man my phone number and we walked home to get it.

. . .

August 2020

    We began to see cop cars idling in the parking lot, windows up and air conditioning on. Then Parks and Rec cleared out the brush underneath the trees. The mulch piles grew; the paths widened. The tents disappeared.

    For several nights, Scott and I tried to catch the Perseids meteor shower. One night, we walked to the park to see if we’d have better luck under its more open sky. We passed a group of young Latino men hanging out in the parking lot. They were socially distant, some in lawn chairs, some in the back of their trucks, just chatting, no music playing. We said hello and headed to the field.

    Once again, the sky was heavy with clouds. Trees blocked the view. We turned to walk further down the field but in the distance saw lights headed our way—so bright we could hardly make out two people on foot, walking fast toward us. “Cops,” Scott said. Technically, the park is closed after dark, but we’d never seen this rule enforced. “Let’s get out of here,” Scott said. 

    Outside the park, we stopped to scan the northeast sky. Again, nothing but clouds. Then the slow caravan of cars and trucks exiting the parking lot.

. . .

April 2020

    I thought for sure we’d have plenty of time, that animal control would take longer than they said, but by the time we got back, the woman was already there in front of the hawk, pole net out. She brought it down, scooped up the bird in one swift motion, as if catching a butterfly, and walked off.

    In a normal year, we would have seen a few neighbors out walking in their yard on our walk home. It was one of those warm spring days that makes you want to roll up your sleeves and rake or dig. This year, it seemed like the whole neighborhood was outside. We’d all been cooped up for a month or more, many working from home for the first time, and chance meetings in the yard or street were the extent of most of our social lives. We stopped to chat with the neighbors we’d hurriedly waved at just a few minutes ago. They were as amazed and pleased at the outcome as we’d been. It felt like a small victory.

    Back at the house, I flipped through my bird book to try and identify the hawk. It had been too far away and too well camouflaged to make much out in the one photo Scott took on his phone, so I had to rely on my memory—already hazy, with the exception of those red eyes. I think it was a Cooper’s hawk, but I can’t be certain.

. . .

September 2020

    Goldenrod waved its cheery flags above the browning bee balm and coneflowers, the purple asters just beginning. 

    In the woods on the other side of the trail, I caught a glimpse of red nylon. I peered closer and thought I saw blue, too—more tents? A tarp?

    If I had to decide between a shelter and camping out, especially during COVID, I’m not sure what I’d choose.

. . .

October-November 2020

    Is it true that the fall leaves were more beautiful this year, or did we just notice them more on our walks?

    It got colder and colder, and the leaves began to drop, the encampment more visible. The people living there remained hidden, though. We didn’t see them or hear them.

    “They’ll lose all their cover soon,” I said to Scott. It was Thanksgiving, and we were walking off our meal. It had been impossible to scale down our recipes for this quarantined holiday, and we’d had far too much food for two people. For a second I fantasized about leaving blankets and plates of leftovers at the edge of the woods. 

    We kept walking.

    Not long after, no trespassing signs appeared, tacked to the trees all along the edge of the woods. You could see through the woods, the encampment cleared, the tents gone. 

. . .

    For weeks after we found the hawk, I wondered what had happened to it. I didn’t want to call the wildlife center because not knowing seemed better than knowing that it didn’t make it. Not knowing meant that there was still possibility. Not knowing means you can go into a pandemic thinking it will be just a few weeks, a few months, OK, maybe a few more months.

    But not knowing also allows those of us who are privileged to ignore people experiencing homelessness, white supremacy, and police violence. It allows us to ignore all who’ve died during this pandemic, all who remain unvaccinated, all who may yet die.

    The hawk did make it. Scott wanted to know and called the wildlife center, and they said they’d released it. I don’t know what happened to the people in the woods. I don’t even know who they were.

    It’s spring again, more than a year since the world shut down. The other day, on yet another walk, we glimpsed a man standing in a thin strip of woods. Under the cover of waist-high bushes, he leaned over and appeared to shift his weight to one leg as if putting on pants. Did he see us walking by? His eyes seemed to focus on some spot a few feet away as he held, for a moment, his balance.