157 and Counting

I was astonished one day last year to learn how many parks there are in Ann Arbor, Michigan -- a college town whose University of Michigan students swell the population by some 40,000 during the school year but whose permanent resident count has been holding more or less steady at about 125,000 for a while.

"How many parks do you think there are in Ann Arbor?" I started asking everyone as soon as I knew the answer myself. "How many would you say the city's web site officially says there are?" I'd prod. Yet not one person -- despite repeated hints that it boasts more parks than one might imagine, even in a city locals pridefully consider an astonishingly sophisticated and diverse and bucolic place -- guessed a number in excess of that which the city web site provides.

In the Spring of 2008 Patti more or less out of the blue suggested that we combine our love of walking with our love of the city and set foot inside every city park -- either for a hike, a short meander, or a picnic. This is what led me to my startling discovery, and to the first of my numbers-guessing games. But Patti doesn't like it when I make her guess, so she made her usual couple of half-hearted tries before demanding that I simply -- and finally -- tell her.

"157," I said.

"So what?" she answered.

We were going to do it, no matter how many parks, or how long it might take us. We went to three in one day on the first Sunday trip we made, and we both came home happy and tired -- and committed to accomplishing the goal we'd established. (We were proud of ourselves, even.) But you know how these things often go. Great energy to start, but then you somehow start running out of steam. We were up to 11 in a few short weeks, but by early fall we had managed to visit a grand total of just 23. Soon enough we were reminding each other less and less often that we hadn't done a park walk lately, and after a while neither of us was still telling the other that it was something that we had to get back to.

But then came "Julie & Julia." Last weekend we saw -- and thoroughly enjoyed -- the movie, and this weekend we renewed our quest, visiting not just one but two parks: Pittsview and Marybeth Doyle. (See our next post for details.) We're still not sure if we'll go back to last year's parks so we can photograph and blog about them the way we will with the parks we've started visiting since being inspired by the movie, but maybe somebody will start reading this at some point and will let us know what he or she thinks we should do. (If you merely want official statistics and geographical and other information about the parks, go to www.a2gov.org/government/communityservices/ParksandRecreation/parks/Pages/parks.aspx).