Yuccabloom: A Memoir of Meaningful Meanderings: Moving On

Nature boardwalk, Lincoln Park, Chicago, IL

How do you encapsulate a city? How do you encapsulate a life spent in a city? How can you fully capture all of the unique and nuanced ways you have experienced living in your hometown? You can't. You simply take what photos you can, communicate what you can, and move on, trusting in your own good memory. You move on, trusting that what you lived for so long will continue to live in your heart, even after you have moved on. And it's all about moving on, it's all about movement.

Above is the southern stretch of Lincoln Park, near the Farm in the Zoo. Back in the day, during my years completing my undergraduate studies, when I rented my first apartment, I used to take long walks from the area of Clark Street and Belden through Lincoln Park and down this path along the pond, heading towards the Gold Coast area and downtown Chicago. Many times, Michigan Avenue would serve as the main artery for my walks, and so I would take it south into the Loop and then back north to Lincoln Park, where I would eventually head home. Back then, these walks served to reacquaint me with downtown Chicago, as I didn't go there often during my teenage years, and appreciate the beauty of my hometown and its wealth of retail, cultural, and nightlife options. As you can imagine, completing a college degree gets stressful, and so I took many such walks to explore my city. I think it was the first time that I truly fell in love with my hometown. Back then, this path along the pond was simple concrete pavement; today, it is a nature boardwalk, made to showcase the reintroduction of prairie plants to the park. Things change and life moves on.

How do you encapsulate a life spent in a city? You can't. You continue to move on, keeping what you can, such as photographs, and trusting in your good memory. I am excited about moving back to the Southwest, and I look forward to enjoying desert beauty again, and I also look forward to the addition of new content to this blog, but part of me will always love Chicago. Part of me will always be taking this walk through Lincoln Park, with the John Hancock Center looming high in the sky in the distance, down Michigan Avenue and around the Loop. Part of me will always be walking back north on Michigan Avenue, greeted by the white-clad Wrigley Building, heading back to Lincoln Park. Part of me will always be on a meandering path, and heading home.