South End Parks and Wreckreation
I’m the ranger at the only park on the South End, a little 5 acre chunk of paradise hidden in plain view on the highway. A few folks use it to walk their dogs or drink a late night beer or have sex in the parking lot. Sometimes they use it to dump their garbage or bash in the fences that now look like hillbilly dentures. There’s no toilet or even a port-a-potty so you can guess what I find in the woods, but it wasn’t left by a bear.
Mostly I mow the lawn and the strip along the road. I plant trees and shrubs, but the soil is poor ‘fill’ of mostly hardpacked gravel. A few survive, but barely, and when the summer drought comes, they suffer mightily because there’s no water at the park. I put some sculpture in at first but someone stole three of them, plus a grill, probably to sell the metal for meth, so the ‘Art Park’ got put on the back burner for my retirement years. Meaning, when my own lawn is crammed and I need to move the overflow to the park.
I’m actually in an organization (Friends of Camano Island Parks) that cares for all the county parks on the island and some of the State Park’s trails so government doesn’t have to hire real workers and so the taxpayers can mistake me for a county worker and yell at me. When they learn I’m working for free, they tell me we should get rid of the park, sell it maybe and use the money more wisely. You know, lower their taxes…. They think all taxes are really a form of theft. I guess they moved here recently from the jungle.
My organization knows I’m down here because they make me sign a waiver if I get hurt I won’t sue their pants off. The county doesn’t have any money and neither do the Friends so good luck suing them for an accident anyway, but once a year I sign the form and go back to my rangering without insurance or pay or any apparent notice, sort of the farthest outpost that Rome has forgotten there’s someone stationed down here. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Just the last vestige of a far-flung civilization, its flickering flame watched over by goofs and fools who still think it’s worth preserving.
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