Finding Pink in a Forest
This weekend I went up to a cabin in Northern Wisconsin with my family, something we have been doing every year since I was little. I made sure to pack my pink and green paint chips for the trip, thinking at the time how easy it would be to find colors in my forest walk that would match the green paint chip perfectly.
I was wrong.
It turns out, despite the name on the green paint chip being forest path, the forest was not overflowing with this particular muted light green color. False advertising!
As I stepped out for my walk in the early afternoon, everything seemed to glitter. It had just rained that morning, and the leaves covering the ground were still wet with drops of water. I started on my way, eyes alternating between the ground and the trees above me. I had a goal, a mission. Finding three pink and three light green things in this forest of swirling reds and oranges and browns seemed daunting. I knew that I would have to stray from the path a bit, which, as my mom warned, could lead to a tick in my ankle. The stakes had never been higher.
I was over the moon when I found my first pink piece- a small flower poking out from a mountain of brown leaves. Feeling encouraged, I kept going, paint chips clutched in hand.
A few minutes later, I spotted a dark brown stick, partially hidden by more leaves. Spotting anything besides leaves was really shaping up to be the biggest challenge of the whole assignment. This stick was covered by a soft moss that matched the green paint chip!
Continuing on my walk through the trees, crunching through the leaves, I came across a tree that had moss travelling from the bottom of the trunk to the top of the tree, straining towards the sky.
I noticed that while I was finding light green moss a-plenty, I was struggling with finding pink after my flower discovery. It was time to get creative. I looked around for shades of pink in anything- it didn’t have to be nature. After a bit of searching, I found it in one of the paddles by the water! The paddle was mostly a faded orange color, but there were shades of pink throughout- you just had to look a little more closely.
A cluster of light pink leaves were at the base of a steep hill at the end of the trail. They looked like they were maybe once a bright green, back in July when the sun set at 8:30 PM and smells of barbeque wafted from the cabins you passed every evening. Now, you could only see a hint of green in each leaves center, fading by the day to give way for a light pink, the kind you might see in a sunset. One day, they will fall and become brown, and will crunch under another walkers feet. But for now, they are pink.
I keep my eyes peeled for more of my elusive shade of light and muted green. I find the color on the ground, this time on a little stick. I put the color chip next to the moss, and pause for a second as I realize that the colors are almost exactly the same. I feel a sense of pride as I take a photo.
Before this walk, I was only looking at the leaves and the colors that immediately popped out at me. Now, I notice the different mosses in the forest, a tiny flower poking out its head, and the pink in a paddle propped up by canoes. Its amazing what two paint chips can make you see.
According to Malchik in “March,” why is a community’s walkability “one of the single greatest factors in building social capital” (p. 45)? What is social capital? How do your community’s public infrastructure and public spaces support walkability (or not)? How has your community’s walkability factored in your social capital?
Community walkability is ‘one of the greatest factors in building social capital’ according to Malchik in ‘March’ because during walks, we get to interact and create bonds with our neighbors, giving us a community. This is important to our well being and the feeling of belonging many of us crave. Social capitial is based on how we feel in our community and towards its members (ideally happy and comfortable), which Malchick simplies to the word “neighborliness”. My community of Albany Park supports walkability through its brown line stops, buses, and parks. Compared to a few of the neighborhoods next to ours such as Ravenswood Manor, which has many benches and squares, the public spaces in Albany Park could improve to support even more walkability. My community’s walkability has factored in my social capital by making me feel more at home around my whole neighborhood, not just in my house. When I walk to the bus or train, I feel a sense of belonging, seeing my neighbor going to catch the same train to the loop. We walk together, talking about our lives.
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