Wandering and wondering through Phoenix Park
You can rent bikes at the entrance. I canvass the idea but decide against it. Maybe another day, especially as today I am solo, even the battery in my ipod has died. So there is nothing but the sounds of the park and my own thoughts for company.
Chesterfield Avenue is the main road through the park and I am following it, ignoring the walking tracks and enticing paths that fall off to either side. I am all for the road less travelled (indeed, I think I’ll end up building a house on it) but not without a map, especially as this park is huge (1752 acres). Not only is the park huge it is also the site for the infamous Phoenix Park murders. Granted that was in 1882. And some would argue they were political assignations. You can’t avoid the politics and history of Ireland, even when taking a walk around the park.
The first sight to see is Wellington Monument. I don’t mind it, but on it’s completion in 1861 it was described as being ‘in defiance of all rules of art and taste’. It was apparently meant to be taller and flanked by lions but public funds ran out.
And a little further up the Avenue is the Presidents of Ireland’s residence. It’s called Aras an Uachtarain in Gaelic and for the umpteenth time in the last few weeks I wish I knew how to pronounce Gaelic. I don’t go in today. You can, there’s even a tour but today is for walking, for greenery and for some quiet time.
I keep wandering along Chesterfield Avenue, passed the first main big intersection, passed the Corinthian column with a phoenix bursting out of it the top of it. Passed the manicured flower beds, the sports fields, further into the heart of this greenery.
And the word for the day is green.
A friend from back home in Australia recently wrote to taunt me with news that in 2007 Dublin had only two days when it didn’t rain. I don’t think 2009 will be much different. Today is first day I have left the house without my red umbrella. But I can’t help thinking that all the rain is a small price to pay for all the green that surrounds me now. It’s startling. Green, Green, Green. The trees and the grass are alert with it, turgid with it, bursting with it, saturated with it.
Further up the avenue an older couple and their granddaughter tumble out of a horse and carriage. The driver thanks the woman earnestly and gives her a quick peck on the cheek as she pays him for the ride. He then reminds the little girls to make sure she says goodbye to the horse. There is such a rapport between them I wonder if they have known each other for years or if they have just met.
My reverie and rhythm is interrupted by the sound of circus music blasting from a dark blue van advertising, funnily enough, a circus. The Forsett Circus. I spot their tent a little further up. I detour off the avenue to the tent. A man wearing a red jacket with gold coloured plastic buttons smiles at me, I smile back but keep walking. Just passed the circus some people stop in their car and ask me if this is the way to the Visitors Centre. I tell them I don’t know but I think it may be further down the road. They drive off and I follow the road, curious to see if my directions are correct.
I am. Approaching the Visitors Centre there is a walled garden, which looks like something out of an Enid Blyton story. Once inside I see that half of the garden is under restoration and the other half is covered with rows and rows of different plants. I wonder what their names are and wish my sister was here.She’d know.
What are these?
OK, this I know.
But what about this rebellious little bugger? Does he have a name?
What is it with humans and our desire to give everything a name?
Walter Benjamin held that naming was the ‘quintessential human activity’. I agree. I marvel at our fascination, compulsion and ability to name, to categorise, to know. I remember I felt relieved when I heard that the international economic turmoil that the world was experiencing was called The Global Financial Crisis.Relief. It’s named. The GFC. Surely if we can give something an acronym, it must somehow be knowable, fixable, under our control. Right?
How clever we humans are. How quaint. How deluded.
But right now, surrounded by some recognizable flowers and even more unknown trees, I am glad for both the chaos and order.
Ashton Castle is just around the corner from the Walled Garden. It has been round since the 16th century but has undergone various restorations since then. The last one was in 1996.It is super cute and super small and looks out on a childrens’ play area.
Just passed the castle is tree with a large reclining horizontal branch. A perfect place for lovers or, as happens a few moments later, a young boy of about nine to have a good sit and think. I walk passed the boy, lost in his own thoughts. And then I walk passed his younger brother who has picked up a handful of stones and is now proudly presenting them to his mother.
It starts to rain and I duck into the Visitors’ Centre, thinking about my little red umbrella sitting far far away on my bed. The staff in the Visitors’ Centre look bored but I am entertained by the section of the exhibit entitled - Drunkenness in the Park.
Apparently there was a meeting in 1792 to ban drinking in the park on Sundays.
‘All who are in favour of this resolution for sobriety, order and religion will say “aye” and those who wish to vote for the bar parlour, the tap room and they sin and disgrace of the country will say “no” ‘.
Talk about a leading question.
After it stops raining, I leave the Visitors Centre armed with a map. I decide to abandon Chesterfield Avenue and go left, slowing heading back to the Parkgate entrance. I walk away from the garden and the children and the unnamed plants and really stretch my legs, letting the oxygen get into my system. Letting my breath quicken a bit, moving my focus away from my thoughts and into my body, into moving. Filling myself with green green green.
It seems quieter on the other side of the park. A few couples enjoying a stroll, a man in his fifties taking his black Scottie dog for a walk. In the thick of the park it feels wilder, a contrast to the manicured flower beds and the clipped grass of the sporting fields that surround you as you enter.
Unfortunately I am yet to see any of the 300 fallow deer that are said to roam about the park. (Little fact I picked up in the Visitors’ Centre about the social hierarchy of the deers; the top five bucks account for 60 per cent of the matings. Most males are destined to never mate at all.)
Although I have no idea what the time is, and little inclination to find out, my legs are telling me I have been walking a while, and yet, as I pass the back of the Dublin Zoo’s emergency access signs I am reminded of how little of the park I have actually seen. But I keep going past the Zoo (the fourth oldest in Europe with over 700 different species), and the hospital, and the Guarda Headquarters. And eventually, and a little reluctantly, I spot some familiar manicured flower beds and the children coming back from their weekend sports games, so I know I must be coming to back to the entrance, which is now my exit.
And there is Parkgate entrance, where people are now returning the bikes they have rented. Glancing back at the map I still haven’t seen Ratra House, the War Memorial Gardens or Magazine Fort. And not one deer, not even a lonely virginal stag. Perhaps next time. And with someone to share a tandem bike with (10 euro for an hour, 20 for three).
Any takers?
Did I mention the green?
