Atlanta is an interesting place to be right now as it shifts into a new version of itself in preparation for an influx of future citizens. Six years ago when I moved here I had no idea that I would ever drop anchor in a city with few bike lanes and no ports. San Francisco had been my home for nearly 15 years. My favorite donut spot was within walking distance down the street. I could bike to Foreign Cinema to watch an old movie after having lunch at China Beach. Owning a car was unnecessary.
Cities pulse with motion and desire. It’s an attractive combination that led me to live in the heart of San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles during different moments in my life. Cycling through traffic while watching the streetscape whiz by nurtures a peculiar meditation that focuses my mind and keeps my creativity flowing. If movement is life, then cities – it seemed to me – provided the foundation for my own personal development.
Cities provide jobs and culture alongside bustling sidewalks and cafes that quake with energy. This energy always kept me inspired and feeling connected to the future. With age, however, priorities change, causing one’s perspective to drive memory towards an equal reality persistent in its reticence throughout my life.
When I look back on the city I chose to call home, it is not the city that I now pine for, it’s the water and the parks. San Francisco comforted me on quiet mornings as I rode my bicycle beyond the grid, into the grip of towering redwoods hugged by ocean air. The city dissolved behind me – a magician’s trick prompted by time and the will to escape. A symphony created by wind and light, sand and fog, waving leaves and a faint, briny smell both performed and stored in my blood. My mind calms and clears; my heart tingles. I smile.
People talk about the beauty but rarely about the joy that comes from living within this dichotomy.
Beauty and joy exist at the boundary of nature and the built environment. We feel it in our heels when we walk from a cement sidewalk and into a verdant park. We breath it when we crouch beneath the urban forest canopy during a Spring rain. We become it when we hear the delightful screams of children jumping from rocks and thrashing in sand. Part of us exists as an extension of the natural world priming us to dissolve our difficulties in exchange for peace at the sight of a tree cluster.
When we grow beauty and joy in our lives, we are able to extract opportunity and culture in more connected and healthy ways.
This is what draws me to The Trust for Public Land and its work to preserve park land for people. Chances are you’re familiar with the parks they’ve helped to preserve or create even if you’ve never heard of the organization: The 606, the Marin Headlands, Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, Historic Fourth Ward Park, Walden Woods, Runyon Canyon, Mt. Diablo State Park, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Cumberland Island, and the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge represent just a handful of TPL’s most ambitious projects.
The Trust for Public Land has now honed in on creating a phenomenal new park on Atlanta’s underserved Westside.
Rodney Cook Sr. Park in Historic Vine City will replace what has been a vacant, flood-prone, lead-infested patch of earth a stone’s throw from the Atlanta University Center.
Fundraising has been in full force but we are still in need of support. If you are a business, please consider a $1000 gift today. If you are a person who just loves parks and looks forward to exploring a new one, please donate what you can. The value of parks for the health of our cities is immediate and renewable. Help spread more beauty and joy in the world today!
We have until May 31 for this gift to be matched! Please help spread the word.
