Since the green space at 9th& New Hampshire has begun to disappear, I’ve been thinking about other places
in town that were accessible and relatively undeveloped when I first moved to
Lawrence but are less so now. This is one of the first essays (with a few updates) I wrote for my
old lawrence.com blog “Blank Canvas.” It was originally published on January
13, 2006.
Between 1997 and 2000, I lived across
the river, and on the other side of the tracks, in grocery store-less North
Lawrence. It was all right, and I enjoyed reasonable rent and relative solitude
there until neighborhood kids busted out most of the windows in my house, and
took to lighting fires in my garage.
Before I was driven out by the
hooligans, one of the good things about living over there was that my commute
(on foot or bike), to my studio in East Lawrence, took me through one of the
city's most unique public parks. Riverfront Park, as it's officially known (I
usually just call the area 'down by the river'), sits adjacent to the
Bowerstock dam and across the Kaw from city hall. Its close proximity to
downtown and rough undeveloped character make it a place like few others in
town. A haven for eagles and Sunday thinkers, it's a popular spot to begin and
end relationships, and occasionally the place where missing persons are found
with all the life soaked out of them.
The park and the bike trail which began
as offshoots of the levee were constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers in
the mid-1970's. Before the levee, flooding devastated North Lawrence. Nowadays
when floods threaten, the turbulent muddy water pushes over the dam and tumbles
into bowl shaped area contained by the levee's clay and rock embankment. The
swirling action of the current, filled with all matter of debris, tends to
redraw the shape of the shoreline and deposits whatever
it has captured from upstream.
The area's instability and
unpredictability make it nearly impossible to develop, and thus free of the
amenities found in most parks. There are no picnic tables, playground equipment
surrounded by rubberized crash zones, or ball fields. There's no grass to
spread out on or gazebo, you'd have to be a fool or really drunk to ever try
swimming there, and eating fish you might catch is strongly discouraged due to
pollution. So, it makes sense that most people who use the park are just
passing through, usually on bikes, jogging, or walking a dog. Some people fish
despite the warnings. A few, the type (I include myself here) who get a thrill
watching disaster re-runs on the Weather Channel, gather to witness the river
rise and rage in the aftermath of a good Kansas thunderstorm. And, once a year,
the whole town descends on the levee in a haze of deet and gun powder smoke to
see the 4th of July fireworks. But for me, in a world where nearly all of our
time is scheduled and all of our space designed, programmed, and interpreted,
the disarray of this ramshackle park is welcome.
Sticks and Stones
Marginal places that lie between nature
and human development, like the area down by the river, have always been the
favored meeting places for teenagers. When I was growing up on the north side
of Chicago, it was the shore of Lake Michigan, where kids from my neighborhood would
go to do anything they'd get in trouble for doing at home. Needless to say, we
spent a lot of time down by the lakeshore. It was along that shore that I
created my first public artwork, on a breakwater rock near the Northwestern
University observatory. Under the title "Friends Forever, 1984,” in
hastily applied orange and blue brushstrokes, my brother Tim and I painted
twenty or so names of high school friends. Those names have long since worn
away, but in their place hundreds of other rocks along the shore have been
painted with heartfelt declarations of love, poetry, and even a few marriage
proposals (they're worth a visit if you're in the area).
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| My first mural? |
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| A more recent rock painting I found on a visit home. |
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| "Curator" detail |
I'm not the only one. Many people,
inspired perhaps by the abundance of raw materials and open space, have made
cool stuff along the riverfront. Look closely and you'll find, scattered
throughout the area, the evidence of humans fiddling around with rocks, sticks,
and found objects to fashion remarkable totems, altars, and improvised
constructions. Other visiting artists have embellished the built areas with
markers, spraypaint, and even mosaic. At times, the whole area takes on the
look of a big environmental art installation, continually being added to and
altered by natural forces and human hands.
Night and Day
When the sun goes down, Riverfront Park
takes on a decidedly spookier feel. Lit up by small fires that crackle with the
echoes of illicit sex and drunken despair, it can be more than a little
foreboding at night. It's also the only place I've seen a dead person outside
of a casket. Every year or so you here about a body being found along the banks
of the river. Sometimes they say it's an accident, sometimes suicide, and
sometimes the mystery is never solved. Because of these stories, I've always
kept an eye out for odd things when I'm down there. There's no telling what you
might find amongst the rocks and branches. A few times, I could have sworn I
saw a person-shaped heap floating near the bank, but it always turned out to be
some odd arrangement of colorful garbage and smooth driftwood.
That is, it always turned out that way
until one day it didn't... It was in June of 2004 when, while walking over the
bridge, I looked down and saw a group of emergency workers pull a man's
lifeless body out of the shallow water near the shore. The newspaper said
that the man had been fishing the night before, but didn't return home. There
was no evidence of an accident or foul play, only footprints, from what
appeared to be the dead man's shoes, leading into the river. Reading this story
reminded me of the college student who disappeared near the river, after a
long night of drinking at a nearby bar, more then ten years ago. Friends said
that he had talked about taking a swim before he left the bar by himself. His
footprints were also discovered at the shore, but his body has never been
found. Strange. In both of these incidents, footprints were found leading into
the water, as if these men had been compelled by something to walk right in.
Off the Path
Riverfront Park is a kind of no man's /
everybody's land - unpolished, semi-wild, and at times dangerous. It's a place
where nature can flex its muscles, and fish stories are born, only to grow
larger with each retelling. Unlike a generic playground made of molded yellow
plastic or a ball field hemmed in by foul lines, down by the river you make up
your own games. Sticks become wands or swords, rocks the building blocks of
fantastic sculptures, and the river a home to man-eating beasts or a ticket to
the Gulf of Mexico. It's all up to you and your imagination. It's a dynamic
place always in motion and populated by a neighborhood of creative creatures.
It's where I go to think things out, and where some go to live when there's nowhere
else to go. Most people stick to the trail though the coolest stuff requires
getting off the path. So the next time you're headed down to the river, go
without expectations and explore not looking for anything but what you find.
Raccoons and kids know this instinctively, grown-ups tend to forget it.
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| Elan |
Dam(n)
Seven years later and Riverfront Park
has a brand new hydro-electric plant sitting right under the dam where the
couple in Tower-Cam Kiss made-out. Its
unfortunate placement blocks a once great view, but it could be worse. You can
still amble down the levee and onto the shifting sandbars where weird stuff
washes ashore and mysterious bonfires flicker at night.
