Commentary: Talbert should be allowed to ramble with our thoughts
There’s an old adage: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
In the section of Talbert Park, south of Victoria Street, the saying fits nicely.
Wildness, especially in places as small as this area next to the Santa Ana River, can continually hold a sense of adventure only if they are left to be without our locked-down “improvements.”
The reasons for this are as simple as Talbert is.
Walk a simple path, and you’ll usually be flowing with the land, following its contours.
Walk a simple path, and you’ll see plants mix and provide the habitat for the next rung on nature’s ladder — bugs and animals.
Walk a simple path, and you’ll view light’s patterns through brush, grass and trees.
Walk a simple path, and you’ll hear the wind.
Walk a simple path, and your thoughts of the city grind, and its incessant details begin to fade.
These things are part of the wild land experience, even in small places like Talbert.
If left alone, it can keep giving these with a new twist every season and year because nature is nothing if not dynamic.
But the more Talbert is tamed, signed, guided and fenced, the more of those simple pleasures will be lost.
In other words, you can’t have perfect convenience, access and safety in wild places and keep the magic of adventure in them.
It’s tempting to throw our engineering at places like this, but the point is that most “improvements” will be static. They won’t flux and flow as nature does.
The proposed OCSD sewer project is static. Costa Mesa’s proposed bike trail is static. Some of O.C. Park’s plans with decomposed granite walkways and parking lots are static.
Talbert was a place of freedom for me as a kid decades ago.
I hope the sense of wonder and appreciation for nature I developed there will be experienced by another lucky kid decades from now.
This is why I started my personal effort at preserving these things:
https://NatureCommission.orghttps://NatureCommission.org
KEVIN NELSON is a founding member of the Nature Commission.