Dear Diary,
Please inform any reader of this part who really loves A.B. Ernst Park, and who is reading before sunset on April 2nd, that they should stop reading right now and go make some last memories in the park they love. Because on April 3rd, trees are going to start being taken out.
So at this point, your readers, dear Diary, are either people who don't love that park, or are reading after sunset, right?
This reminds me that I don't know, and haven't known for a long time, who reads you, dear Diary. Strictly speaking, I don't even know that anyone reads you; for all I know, the numbers I see are all artificial intelligences being trained. But even if that's not so, I mustn't assume any baseline level of familiarity with the work I've done with your excellent help.
So. Dear Diary, you are a blog about public amenities, and especially about public restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and public water fountains that are outside. Most of these things are in parks, and because variety is the spice of life, sometimes, as now, I just do some park appreciation without talking about plumbing at all. The area we've focused on is the northern part, a sort of peninsula, of the City of Seattle, in a northern border state of the United States.
At one of the peninsula's southern tips, towards the middle east-west, is a neighbourhood called Fremont that likes to call itself the centre of the universe. Parts of Fremont and its more staid eastern neighbour Wallingford are pretty hilly, and possibly as a result, three of their parks have as their raisons d'etre that they allow people to traverse those hills.
The Wallingford Steps are the flashy sibling, made of concrete but with spectacular artistic adornment, plus, yes, some plants. They're the most successful as stairs, too, linking N 34th St with N Northlake Way, and, across that perilous street, with Gas Works Park and the Burke-Gilman Trail.
Troll's Knoll Park is the plain, friendly sibling; challenged to praise it, Seattle Parks calls it "sustainable". It connects N 36th St with N 38th St adjacent to Aurora Ave N. Just east of its bottom is the Fremont Troll; at its top is the Troll's Knoll P-Patch.
But A. B. Ernst Park almost ignores its stairs, which unimpressively go from N 35th St to the next alley south. Instead it focuses on being a quite beautiful park, one worth spending time in.
But tomorrow, motivated mainly by access and activation, Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation will start changing A. B. Ernst Park. I would be pretty shocked if the result of the changes isn't loved, by some, within a year or three - Seattle Parks generally knows what it's doing. But that doesn't mean I can't celebrate the old version.
I learnt on my second recent visit that what I see as this park's signature element is not what everyone sees. I went across the street and discovered that what drivers see is mostly a couple of giant street trees. But if, like me, you walk west from the Fremont branch library (soon to close itself for construction), there's no doubt at all that A. B. Ernst Park is mainly about these spectacular pillar-like trees.
These are arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis). Another species that's prominent in the park is bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). And how, you may ask, dear Diary, do I know these things, having never displayed any botanical knowledge before? Alas, this is how:
There are many signs like that attached to specific trees; there are also quite a few on the ground. Other trees bear different symbols:
Well, as I mentioned not too long ago, dear Diary, I'm having technical difficulties. Let me describe the planned work, and then close with two more photos.
Most people, I think, understand this park as a winding path with a weird structure in the middle, sort of a crude theatre. The occasion for the work is that Parks acquired a bit of land east of the park. So they're moving the path eastward, and widening it, because even though the park's current page says it "provides wheelchair access", paths can never be too wide when considering Access.
And then they're giving the space thus created at the west end of the park to Activation. A picnic table will be where the park entrance now is, and south of the table will be an "embankment slide" with "hillside loops". That area will rejoin the main path at the head of the stairs.
If I'm reading the plans right, it's a goal to keep the theatre-like area, and the artwork that surrounds it (Water Mover by Jenny Heishman) more or less intact. But they're planning to remove half of the arborvitae, so I expect it to be a long time before the park feels right to me.
Well, dear Diary, writing this part in you on my phone has been horribly time-consuming, so I'm going to have to find a better way soon. Until then, happy days and nights. The first photo below shows arborvitae, theatre and Water Mover, while the second shows the stairs at the bottom of the park.
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