Secret Union Terrace

On June 21st 2009, my brother and I walked deep into secret Union Terrace. I took some pictures and upon saving them to my computer, promptly lost them. Yesterday, as I was making the slide show for youtube, I rediscovered them in a mislabeled folder and today I can finally share that journey with you.

On the Allentown Parks and Recreation map it is considered part of Union Terrace. Thing is, of our many parks, Union Terrace isn’t the wildest. It is a recreational green space created during the W.P.A park expansion projects of the 1930’s. This part of Union Terrace is very different and without a path, boundaries, or even a sign; it is almost a secret.

It certainly isn’t tame.

Here, stumbling around the dense growth of mid summer, the truest beauty of an ecosystem is revealed. That beauty is succession, and in this section of Union Terrace, it is everywhere.

An important key to that unbelievable process is decomposition, and it was strikingly evident here:



It was hot that afternoon, but the crowded growth felt cool. No asphalt to absorb the heat, nothing paved, no concrete.

Trees, vines, shrubbery, all the eye could see

Hard to believe, I was standing in a city and barely a football field from me was MLK Boulevard.

The best experiences, the moments worth writing a blog about are in these half hidden places that seem to glow with the ability to extend the consciousness, even for a brief second.

You can get lost in less than two city blocks, but there is always the reminder that even here, in the thriving succession of an ecosystem, the mark of humanity is never far away.