The Lower Macleary Trail, a spur of Forest Park, begins a few hundred feet from my back door. This makes me feel like John Muir who, in 1873, could hop over his back fence in Oakland, California, into a viable ecosystem.

It is dusk when I tentatively start up the path for the first time, passing under the Thurman Street Bridge, a strangely wrought structure, looking like a suspension bridge built upside down.

Do the Gods pass over?
I hear footsteps, and a bus.