To put it plainly, there are many aspects of landscapes that transcend our personal experience with time. A caveman has looked upon the same beautiful stones in awe that we see now, and others will continue to do so long after we’re gone. The ambiguous earth surrounding everything, defined and formed by us into landscapes, functions on a timeline all its own. A near unimaginable length that inspires wonder within us with each brief glimpse we’re allowed to take for ourselves.
This idea is the driving factor for the proposed amendments at Udall Park. The goal is to emulate time on a massive scale, using thoughtfully placed stones and trees in a trail system that will inhabit the undeveloped area north of the park’s current activated spaces. This trail is blocked into a series of zones, each depicting a different place in the grand scheme of time.
The first is a path enclosed by massive cliff-like stone faces, meant to be looked upon upward. They symbolize a time before everything, with an earth inhabited solely by elements. Next is a zone representing prehistory, with rough, broken stones and a dense, forested surrounding. After this comes a zone indicative of early civilization, with stones formed into crude geometric shapes and plants designed with loose intention to beautifully bloom.
Next is an apical space, designed to emulate the ‘peak’ of civilization. A meadowy plain with intentionally arranged blocks and pyramids, it symbolizes order, domain over nature, and landscapes as we know them today. From this, however, comes ruin: a space of willows and toppled structures, emblematic of a fall. Further still, a wispy space of rubble and palo blancos, symbolizing the end of time itself.
The trail concludes with a slow transition back from barren earth to the monolithic stone faces of the first zone, framing time’s grand scheme in an optimistic, cyclical fashion, and letting people experience an emulation of earth’s time for themselves.