Janice and I went on an adventure this week. We drove a couple hours to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and walked and walked and walked.
Our first stop was the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, a hundred and fifty-eight acres of luscious plantings and monumental art. I’d been to the conservatory there a number of times before, but not the park. Janice had been to the park, but not the conservatory. This time, we did both the inside and the outside.
We started with lunch in the café, from which you can look outward at the gardens and upward at Chihuly glass. The café installation of the artist’s work is sixty or so feet of big, flowing, organic shapes, in a color gradient that starts in blues and works its way through yellow and orange. The food was tasty, too.
Following lunch, we walked through the Children’s Garden, which was full of delighted children at play. The water feature is, hands down, the highlight of this garden. It’s a raised pool shaped like the Great Lakes, with each lake labeled. The names of the states and province around the lakes are stamped into the surrounding concrete, making it possible to jump quickly from, for instance, Illinois to Indiana to Michigan. Some cities are labeled, too, so you can stand right on them. So many children have stood on Grand Rapids, home to Meijer Gardens, that those letters are showing signs of wear.
Nevertheless, it isn’t the setting of the water feature that makes it great. It’s the water. There’s a flow to it. The pool is full to the brim. And it’s stocked with plastic boats, enough for every child to play with at least one. Most of the little guys gave their boats a push, watched them go, and pushed them some more. One boy, though, held his boat firmly on the watery brim and ran as fast as he could beside the pool, sending up a spectacular bow wave that continued for as long as he could keep up his speed. That was along the eastern shore of Lake Huron. He had to slow down to the make the turn into Lake Erie, where the pool is lower to the ground anyway. Lake Huron was perfect. I’ve always found that to be the case, myself.
Next, we took a tram ride to view the outdoor sculptures. Our tour guide, one of the park’s eight hundred volunteers, was informative and entertaining, and never failed to involve child passengers, Walter and Lilly, in the presentation. Then we sought out the Japanese garden. As we walked through it, no matter where we were in the space, it felt as though care had been taken to make that space lovely. Serene. Conducive to contemplation and lingering. Sometimes, you couldn’t see what lay beyond the next curve. Sometimes, the view was expansive. Walter and Lilly were unaffected by the designer’s choices. “Hi, ladies!” the children called as they breezed past us. Far from being detrimental to the garden experience, however, being greeted by the kids warmed us on a chilly day.
Having spent most of the morning on our feet, Janice and I hied ourselves to the outlet mall she wanted to explore. I had no idea you could do that much walking at a mall. You can. You definitely can. When Janice checked her step-counting gizmo that evening, she found herself just shy of twice her personal best, and set about to rectify the shortfall. She set herself a new goal, and we walked up and down the hotel hallway till she figured she had met it. The step total on the gizmo remained unchanged. We walked some more. No change. In the end, she walked in her room. Only late that night did the gizmo reading change: she had exceeded her goal by the better part of another thousand steps.
The next morning, we took in the John Ball Zoo, starting with a lift on the funicular. A four-year-old girl in a pink princess dress made the ride memorable. Peering out the glass at the front of the car, and eyeing the steep track the train would follow up the hill, she said—with what was clearly a delicious mix of apprehension and excitement–“Ohhh, no-oo! This is gonna be somethin’!”
Janice and I saw a red panda, a capybara, flamingos, a toucan, a pair of red hornbills, mountain bongos, lions, chimpanzees, and assorted other exotic beasts. Then we headed for home, stopping at another outlet mall on the way. Leaving town for a day was fun—many thousand steps in the right direction.
16 June 2023