I went for a walk again today.

Kristina said, “Dad, you need to walk. You also need to drink more water. Hydrate. You have to live past a hundred. I’m counting on you.”

I didn’t mention that the only breakfast and lunch I had was coffee, by choice. I didn’t want her to feel guilty for not feeding me when it was my own fault. And I do need to lose a little weight, not that I’m chunky, but I could develop a little belly if left unchecked. So I agreed and decided to walk.

I took my poles, my pouch with wallet, phone, pen, my little holder of business cards proclaiming me as writer/poet, and started on my way, heading for the library.

I walked down the hill past the neighborhood church on the corner, crossed at the light, and climbed the steps and ramp to the library door.

It was closed. I remembered as quickly as I read the sign that the library would be closed through Friday for whatever, probably routine maintenance, whatever that means for a library.

It was Wednesday. I would have to go somewhere else.

Now I’m back home, sitting in my chair, letting the afternoon percolate, as I resume my story.

So there I was, at the closed library, deciding where I would go. I went down the ramp and the stairs, crossed at the light, and headed for Blake Garden.

I passed the back side of the church and heard the high voices of little children. There was the three story building with the sign, “Preschool upstairs.”

Adjacent was the playground, little children running around, chasing, screaming laughing, jumping from behind the bushes, happy everywhere. This time I didn’t stop to watch. Blake Garden closes at 4:00. It was 2:30. Maybe on the way back, if the children were still there. [Footnote: They weren’t.]

I came to the fence and the driveway gate and the side entrance. Some people were leaving and walking up the hill or going to the parking lot. Others were going in.

I opened the side gate and went in.

Yes, inside it’s like another world. It’s like an island in a sea of ordinary. It’s like an oasis in the everyday. It’s like the Secret Garden of the Enchanted Garden of the Garden of Eden before sin spoiled the landscape.

I was on sacred hallowed ground.

A few of us walked down the entrance path, passing others walking up and out.

Two young guys, fit and friendly, walked past and, when nobody was looking, held hands. My heart leaped up at the sight of love manifest in the world. I thought again, as I always do, how we all need to bring the garden with us, more love for everyone in the whole world on the entire earth.

The garden paths branch off, some paved, some cobbled or pebbled, most packed dirt. I followed the way to the Big House.

The Big House is a relic of those former days when people with money bought a few choice acres of the hillside, built a mansion, and sat sipping as they watched over the Bay and gloated toward San Francisco.

The Good Old Days.

The property has passed through hands, and now the University of California at Berkeley oversees it as the Horticultural Lab and Field Practice for research and hands-on experience for students majoring in a life learning and loving to live with plants.

It’s renowned, revered, maybe even legendary.

Which leads me to a side bar justifying my ability to make such a statement.

I have known many gardens. Even a few here and there sprinkled abroad. Like the Tuileries in Paris, the City of Light. Like Vondelpark in Amsterdam where Democracy sits everywhere and equally on the same green grass.

Like the Mirabellgarten in Salzburg, built to please a mistress, with the roses growing up the hill unnoticed by the tourists who stay on the path Julie Andrews led the Von Trap children up to the high note, that lovely little garden.

Like at home in Altadena, just above Pasadena, L.A. adjacent, where we have within a short drive or a long walk, three, count ‘em, three, Great Gardens, and I mean really Great.

The L.A. Arboretum, with room to spread out, just down from the Santa Anita Racetrack.

The Huntington Gardens which have everything money can buy.

Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge, just down the street from JPL which oversees the astronauts in space, the garden part of the reminder of the joy of returning to earth.

But I digress.

Today, this time, I was going around the Big Empty House in Blake Garden, skipping the pool with the big fish who come up to be petted and I could see if they remember me.

I was going on the other side to see what’s there down the hill.

It’s not a neat garden, not manicured and segmented. It’s wild like nature. The plants, many identified, are growing among each other. The trees, tall and spreading, are often older than I am.

The paths lead everywhere in all directions. There are little spaces cleared, some with benches or logs to sit upon, where you can enjoy the view and watch the birds fly over the Bay. Sometimes you can see the bridges, fog permitting.

The garden has its own tributary stream, trickling through the undergrowth and overgrowth. You stop, thinking you could be anywhere, and realize that you are.

I went all the way down to the bottom lower fence. There are houses on the other side. Blake Garden is their back yard.

Some houses have their own gates with their own locks. I can just imagine, at night, after the Garden is closed, they come sneaking in to stroll through their back yard like plutocrats.

On the path back up, I saw a healthy looking old fellow up on the right on a little cleared space, sitting on a bench and reading a book. A narrow path snaked up to his platform, and I thought of climbing up to see the view from there, imagining the probable conversation of me, “Mind if I sit and share the view?” and him, nodding toward the empty side of the bench, or, if he was loquacious, maybe saying, “OK.” Which would then open a conversation, like me, “Whatcha reading?” and him, “A book.”

But I didn’t take the bait and continued on the path which led me by the backside of the House. I was looking for the little clearing where months earlier Kristina and I sat on benches with a few others while two musicians played Irish music, both accomplished and having just met each other, but you know how musicians are, they like making music together and join in wherever they are, maybe playing elsewhere for money, but here they made a thing of it and the older one said, “We’ll be here every Tuesday afternoon, 2:30 until closing.”

It wasn’t Tuesday, and I don’t think the little clearing I was looking at was quite the right place.

There had been two women then on our right, sitting together, obviously friends, who said cheerfully, “We come here all the time. We bring our lunch.”

Yes, Blake Garden is a kind of unhurried uncrowded but frequented community gathering place.

Always welcomes the solitary walker like today me.

I vowed to come here more often, a lovely way to get my exercise, a promise that this time I hope I won’t break.

At the office by the greenhouse adjacent, where there’s a bench outside, and restrooms inside on both sides by the entry door, there’s a desk display, a sign-in sheet if you care to comment, a jar for donations, brochures, maps, and schedules, and a friendly woman who was receptive to conversation, so I gave her my card, too obviously pushing my blog, saying that Blake Garden is already mentioned therein, but that I owe it another entry and would write it up when I got home. This was designed to get her to take a look.

It was just before closing time, she was getting ready to go down and lock the lower gate I had just discovered, thinking I may have entered that way and was giving me fair warning. She asked, “Which way did you come in?” I answered, “I came in at the top,” noticed another exit, and added, “but not that one.” She said, “Ah yes, the parking lot.”

As I pushed through the gate, there was no competition. I was the solitary walker again.

As I started trudging up the hill toward and past the preschool on my left, I noticed another solitary walker, about my age, but walking better, halfway up the hill. I paused to catch my breath and the distance between us lengthened.

“Oh well,” I thought, “I don’t need to say hello to everybody.”

Just past the preschool, I sat down at the back of the church where a concrete emplacement covered access to something, maybe power cables, maybe gas, maybe water. An elderly gentleman with an empty stroller was standing there on the sidewalk.

I immediately slowly put two and two together, and remembered the parents, often fathers, often grandfathers, pushing baby-filled strollers, unloading them at the preschool, then taking the empty strollers back uphill to return with them later in the day to refill them.

He asked me, “Do you have grandchildren?” I said, “Yes, a lovely granddaughter in Ireland who works for Trinity Library, very impressive. No great grandchildren yet.”

Two women with two little girls, one each, came up the hill. The little girls climbed up on the metal covering on the concrete structure where I was sitting and started jumping like a trampoline. One mother explained, “They’re taking gymnastics.”

I thought, “They must be starting earlier and earlier, jumping in the womb.”

The mother showed me one of the moves. “Apart, together. Apart, together.” She said, “They do the apart, but have trouble with the together.”

I nodded. I probably restrained myself from the expected usual rejoinder, “I hear you.”

I left the jumping girls and the empty stroller gentleman who turned out to be the grandfather to one, and they passed me on the way to the corner, the stroller still empty as the girls jumped and ran on ahead. He said, indicating the stroller, “It’s just in case.” I may have said something like, “At that age, they’re so full of energy they bounce until they’re empty, run out, then fall over.”

I turned the corner and headed up the hill. I was passing the church, reminding myself that I have never yet been inside, but sometimes they have events and concerts, and I’ll check the schedule.

Suddenly there was music in the air.

Beautiful and resonant and clear. I thought “Someone’s playing the radio.” Then I noticed, at the upper level platform of the church complex where the office is, a man was standing, his back to me and the street, playing a guitar. I noticed the speakers on a bench aimed my way.

The sound was beautiful, melodious, and filled the air.

I thought, “He may be one of those street corner musicians practicing at the church, getting ready to set up on the street, hoping to take in a little money, maybe selling the records he’s made, he is that good.”

Then I continued up the street, toward our driveway, checked the mailbox, empty, went inside and started writing this blog.

I reached for my glasses. The case was empty. A quick search. Nothing. I convinced myself that I must have left them at Blake Garden when I took them off to get out my card to give to the receptive woman.

Now it’s the next day. I got up early enough to be there when they open at 9:00. I walked past all the parents bringing their little children to the preschool.

I went through the Garden gate, down the Garden path to the office, saying to myself, rehearsing, “I think and hope I left my glasses here yesterday,” and there they were on the counter with several other lost and found items.

I took them with delight. I probably said something like, “What a wonderful place this is, that when you lose something, you know it will be safely taken care of and waiting for you.”

The guy working at the desk was not loquacious, and said laconically, “We get a lot of glasses.”

I went back up the hill, the solitary walker, came home to finish writing this blog, and here it is.