Jarvis Park

It is a cold overcast Monday morning. The usual start-of-the-weekday-bustle is eerily absent.  Outside, the light is flat and monotone.  The still air feels emptied, only the shrill gull-cry and bird-twitter pierce the blankness.

Today, I take my walk in Jarvis Park. It has a small man-made lake, encircled by an .8-mile path.  The lake is stocked with fish and alligators and framed by tall loblolly pines, banks of ornamental grasses and an understory of native bushes and pine straw. A venerable live oak serves as the focal point amidst open playing fields, once occupied by grazing cows.  A printed plaque warns the largest alligator caught on Hilton Head measures 14 feet long.  I often see a leathery head and snout gliding through the water, the displaced ripples indicating the size of the alligator’s imbricated body.  Walkers, joggers, children, dogs and birds honor a cautious coexistence.

This morning a pair of great blue Herons skim the water’s mirror slick surface. They look as sculpted as the expensively crafted lawn ornaments that flock the manicured lawns on the island. This green space is natural and unpretentious.

It is easy to be present here. The views are contained. The park is a gallery of still-lifes, unlike the ocean, which is a limitless kinetic mural. Sometimes, I prefer to be insular and inward, so I come to Jarvis. My senses are more acute. I run my hand against the rough trunk of a longleaf pine and rub the long needles against my fingers to inhale the smell of pitch. I kick stray pinecones and hear them skitter against the worn asphalt.  Around the corner a hidden squirrel rustles the fan-shaped leaves of a bush palmetto and a feral cat pounces into the brittle brown debris the fall has scattered across the ground.  The aliveness is concentrated and discreet. This is an introverted space; the ocean is extroverted.

Nature is filled with its own limitless personalities.  Outside I can be alone, but never lonely.