Now Playing: Giacomo Puccini--"In questa reggia" from Turandot (Birgit Nilsson)
I decided to spend Earth Day in some style this year, and so walked twenty miles or thereabouts last weekend. Earth Day and I have a somewhat problematic relationship. I'm all for the environment, but my hopes... aren't high, to say the least. I still believe everyone should do what they can, but it's frankly rather hard for me to work up any hope, especially after the general national neglect of the past six years. The Earth Day Festival this year was being held in the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, where I'd never actually been. It didn't look all that far on the map, and as this was one of the first really nice weekends we've had this year, I had an excellent time walking through the Arb and Gallup Park. The latter is always a treat--you walk along the banks of the Huron for some time, preferably very early in the morning, until the river widens past a bridge into a lake containing a number of tiny islands connected by smaller bridges and walkways. It's a popular spot, and I don't blame it. Making my way past U.S. 23, I found that the way to Dixboro Road was open, as it hadn't been before, and strolled through a part of the riverfront I'd never seen before, around the effluence of Fleming Creek, the latter beautifully punctuated by an old cider and grist mill along Geddes Road. After that, I entered what I believed to be the Botanical Gardens, and spent the next half hour or so in what might as well have been a trackless waste. There were trails, to be sure, but there seemed not another soul around, probably for a mile, and it was a very decent and enjoyable time, even following false trails and having to retrace my steps. I eventually found an east-west gravel roadway that led to Dixboro Road, and found from the addresses along the roadside that I was still well short of my destination. Walking along roadsides is always a weird thing, especially in this country. One shouldn't feel strange or ashamed (especially as, given the oil situation, a lot more people will probably have to do this in twenty years), but one does. The actual Botanical Gardens (heaven knows where I'd been wandering around for the past half hour) were very pleasant and attractive but something of an anticlimax after the journey. The Festival itself was more of a "family affair," and as someone on my own, I again felt a little strange. It wasn't much different from the Green festivals they had on Main Street not too long ago, differing only in location. On leaving, the guy waving cars into the parking lot asked me if I'd enjoyed it. My response must have been a little lackluster, as he then asked if I had any ideas on what they could do to improve the thing. Two hours of walking had done their work of rasping me up a little, and I hope my forehead wasn't too clearly stenciled with "you have got to be shitting me." I almost said "everyone should stop driving and flying, 'cause that's probably the only thing that'll help," but he seemed very polite and earnest, and it totally wouldn't have been cool. I wasn't in much shape to take the same way back, and so walked to the farthest stop on the #2 busline, the closest to my position. This walk took me through what seemed like a postapocalyptic landscape of office parks, so in a single day I basically got the whole barrage of different Ann Arbor area landscapes. I also got sunburned for what must have been the first time in years. So it wasn't really a waste, then.