City of Forgotten Trees: Stories of Lost Urban Nature

A park. A place of wonder and whimsy, where the air is warm, the sky glows, and the trees shade you from the heat of the shining sun. You feel a sense of ease and comfort of the toasty air around you as you’re surrounded by a lush and vibrant, bright scenery. All of your troubles slipping away as you fly away to a world of dreams where your worries never bother you. Just the smell of sweet flowers is enough to cheer you up. And the quiet sounds of the birds just ease your mind in ways words cannot describe. The warm weather, the beautiful scenery, the soft sounds, weaving together to create a peaceful tapestry, a harmonious melody of a perfect moment.

Though you wish you could live this way forever, you know this can’t last forever. People out there need you, need you to be present with them. You feel sorry for yourself for leaving this perfect moment; meeting this moment again is an opportunity which you know not when you will encounter again. In the big city, green and serene is a hard scene to come by. But you wish so much that you will get to meet this moment again, enjoy it often, as often as everyday.

You regretfully leave that park and return to the city. But if the city is what confines you, then you must make do with what you have. You hold out hope, for a park is a park regardless of where it is placed. Holding your head up high, you march your way into the city park. You think that it should not be so different. As every park does, it has trees, flowers, small harmless even friendly wild life. But you can’t help but feel like there is something missing from this park experience.

The air is stiff and suffocating, the sky is bleak and dark, the trees you thought would shade you from the blazing, scorching sun appear to be…balding? You can’t help but feel anxious, with the humid air, gloomy dull scenery. In an attempt to free yourself from worldly worries, you’ve ended up stressing out over every little thing as if the future is approaching at a speed incomprehensible to people. The consequences of other people’s actions, the results of your inaction. You become filled with despair, for the failure of a peaceful moment you’ve ended up receiving was not even that easy to find. You would’ve accepted this bad day, had this park been easy to find. But an establishment like this is far from easy to find, tall buildings surround it, nobody who cares enough about a park knows about it, and those who do care are likely still in the dark about this place even existing.

You wish there is something you could do, to clean, to freshen, to reverberate this bleak dull park. Alas, you wish you'd done more to help find and show the hidden light of nature, the depressing tall buildings, the dark foggy pollution, and the bustling city noise leaves urban nature in that park to become muted, covered, hidden…Lost. If only there was a way that city of green could be rediscovered.