My enduring love affair with Ring Park.
Wednesday morning dawned, literally, like a breath of fresh air. The first real hint of a coming fall after a long, long, oppressively hot summer.
The morning simply begged for a resumption of my nearly four decade long love affair with Ring Park.
UF professor Alfred Ring’s gift to GNV opened in 1990. But long before that I was writing editorials for The Sun advocating for the establishment of an interconnected system of greenways – Ring Park included – that would connect our City of Creeks.
I bought my house in the late 1980s on the edge of the nature preserve that would soon become Ring Park. And we have been neighbors ever since.
My kids grew up scampering along the trails of this marvelous ‘slope forest’ hard up against Hogtown Creek.
Here, in the heart of the city, is a sliver of paradise that never gets old.
And thanks to Wild Spaces, the City just completed a park upgrade to the tune of more than $400,000 in new boardwalks and other renovations.
But of course, it’s not the man-made infrastructure that makes Ring Park the gem that it is. It is the sheer delight of living cheek to jowl with nature.
Oh, and it’s also a photographer’s dreamscape. If you are into that sort of thing.
I usually walk Ring Park twice a day with my dog.
But on this special, crisp, cool morning I ventured out alone.
To savor the first seductive promise of the coming autumn. To linger here and there.
And to capture images that seem to be forever in flux.
Ring Park. Come for the view. Come back often for the sheer enchantment of it all.
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