The subject matter of this post isn’t any sort of theory
or idea that has been plaguing my mind as of late, nor is it even about
children or their play. More of a group of observations that I’ve found quite
humbling…
Recently, with the coming of sunshine (however brief) and
the coming of summer I have begun to notice more than children existing on the
playground “The Land”. And I’m not just talking about cats, which wander on
often throughout the day; my favourite being Jekyll. All of a sudden there has
been an influx of life on the space, but also I’m more aware of it, looking for
it, so I see it more.
It begun when I shifted a load of tyres, swapped the base
of a swing and cleared the brook of any loose parts blocking its flow. Standard
playground maintenance. Then I sat back at the base of a tree and looked at the
space, hoping for inspiration for a new modification to breathe new life into
loose parts that hadn’t been used in ages.
That was when a blackbird flew down from a tree and began
hopping from tyre to tyre. And at the same time a robin flew into view and
settled on the swing, slowly shifting its body weight as the swing swung. I
didn’t really think much of it, other than that this was a cool robin, until it
charged at the blackbird and scared it away. The robin then jumped around and
flew from tyre to tyre, hopping along the edge of the brook all before flying
back onto the swing as it still swung lightly in the wind. It was fascinating to
see, that it was inspecting every single loose part I had moved or modified,
wanting to know what had changed.
Since then I have marvelled at our peaceful colony of
mining bee’s (which have now left us), of the pair of pool frog that live under
one of our loose part bridges, or of the lesser British water boatmen that
glide their way atop the brook. Of the fresh water shrimp below them or of the
tiny, rare, carpenter bee’s we’ve only just realised weren’t black flies. All
the different beetles, spiders, snails and birds, or the squirrel the keeps
doing bird impressions outside the office. We’ve even got footage of a young
fox prowling around at night. Only yesterday I froze upon realising that a was
four feet from a female blackbird as it stood near the brook, We looked at each
other before it jumped in the brook and had a bath. Dunking its head under and
shaking its wings, once finished we looked at each other again and then she
flew off.
I may work on the playground, and children may play
there, but all these examples of animal life, they are born here, they live on
here and they die here. This space if their home and that curious robin wanted
to know what I was changing to it. It makes me realise that “The Land” is
bigger than the children that access it, that there is an added degree of
naturalness to the space and that there is even more to discovery then than I previously
realised.
