Watching the world directly around me open up in this pre-post-pandemic moment is like watching one of those films of a flower blooming in slow and spectacular motion.
Before the camera, petals that have grown snug and safe around a delicate flower pistol begin their slow unfurling — it’s as if they are testing the air and light — then burst powerfully open in a spasm of energy, color and, I think, something akin to trust.
My view of these past few weeks here in Seattle is not exactly the same, of course, but “spasm of energy, color and trust” feels like the best way to describe it. And for me, watching a place I love return to full flower after a long winter season is a wonder to behold.
In just this way today, another of my favorite walks opened. Under a gray-blue sky, I strolled with my son and his girlfriend through the Woodland Park Zoo.
(NOTE: If the word “zoo” sends you down the sad road of captive animal ethics, know that I too believe wild animals should live in wild places and not in 92 acres of enclosures in the middle of a major town. However, since humanity’s constant encroachment and waste is at fault for threatened species, I hope we can agree it’s our collective responsibility to save, conserve and help bring back animals on the brink of extinction. Woodland Park Zoo truly shines in this conservation effort.)
My son and I have walked so many times along the zoo’s winding, tree-covered paths. Meandering through the zoo’s open-enclosure habitats has resulted in some of our best one-on-one conversations. In fact, the first time he described for me how the autistic mind works (from his experience) we were looping through the African Savanna biome.
“Autism is like bats,” my son, age 14, explained in the pitch dark of the reptile house. “I’m hanging upside down and everyone else is not.”
Later in this same chat he told me why he made lists of car names and music titles, compared people to cars, and assigned each person he met a rock band, all of which he still does today.
“It helps me understand how people really are,” he told me then.
It was here, at age 17, as we watched a large orangutan sit in a tree and pick her nose, that my son told me had a girlfriend — who happened to live 5,000 miles away near Liverpool, England.
I thought he was pulling my leg, that he’d made the girlfriend up, even though kids on the spectrum rarely fib. I tried to use the moment as a teachable one:
“There are things that are true, and things that we want to be true . . . , “ I launched.
Turned out he did, indeed, have a girlfriend. He dated that young woman for three years and through several international visits before they decided to stick to their respective continents.
Today as we arrived at the empty orangatang compound, it hit me that our zoo walks will soon become way farther and fewer in between.
Barreling toward 23, he and his love (not from England) are headed to Kansas. It’s his first big adventure away from family. Boy has he come a long way since the bat analogy.
The orangutans, by the way, were working off the buzz of cake inside their structure after celebrating the 40th birthday of one of the females of their congress. Pink tissue paper and fresh fruits were strewn merrily throughout the indoor and outdoor enclosure. We all wished we’d been there for the party.
Even though they are adults, I had to laugh at my son and his girl. As we passed the zoo’s special Dinosaur Discovery exhibit, where a swath of mechanical dinosaurs intended to wow a far younger audience could be heard mechanically lowing, they both tried really hard to underplay their interest. We didn’t stop, given our very adult time crunch. But, I have a feeling he’ll be taking her back there before they hit the road.
Not every path I walk is as laden with memories. The ones in the Woodland Park Zoo will always make my heart swell. Still, I find that the older I get, the more the roads I walk seem familiar; like we have a history; life we are family. There’s a comfort in that.
Maybe that’s why as I walk through my city this week and watch its petals popping out — people filling out restaurants at a quarter capacity a month ago, groups gathering to picnic at Gasworks Park, the Pike Place Market starting to hum and vibrate once more, a sign in doorway of my local Trader Joe’s inviting vaccinated shoppers go maskless — I find myself pausing every now and then in the middle of a sidewalk or woodland trail, staring at the beauty of life unfurling, as if all around me were a field of wildflowers in bloom.
And in each pause, it hits me again and again, “Isn’t this a wonder?”
The view at Woodland Park Zoo today. Photos by Cheryl Murfin
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