Appreciation For Mendon Ponds Park

The Monroe County Parks have a special place in my heart. Each of these parks is an oasis of nature located in or around the city of Rochester in upstate New York. My favorite, Mendon Ponds Park, hasn't changed very much in the fifteen years I've known it. This is more of a praise for the preservation of nature in the park than it is a memory of a lost landscape. When I was four, I was attacked by geese on one of the swamp trails. I was in a stroller. My dad told me to cover my face, and he ran through them. (I wasn't hurt, but it was a scary experience.) In first grade, I went with my class to feed the chickadees on the Nature Trail, something I had already done with my family. I was so proud of myself: while my classmates were fidgety, I could stand still and get the birds, with their delicate little claws, to land on the edge of my palm and take a seed from my hand. In seventh grade, my dad took me to one of the creeks that fed into Quaker Pond and we collected water samples looking for water bears (also known as tardigrade). We studied them under his microscope. I took the samples to my science class for one of my Independent Science Investigations, so my classmates could see live water bears under a microscope after I gave a presentation on them. In my eighth grade Earth Science class we took a field trip to the park to study the landscape shaped by glaciers, like eskers and kettle lakes. For a challenge, last summer I decided to run the half-marathon that one of the local running stores was hosting on the trails. In the process of training for the half, I realized that Mendon Ponds actually felt like home for me. I want to add a note of praise for a unique aspect of Mendon Ponds: Wild Wings. One of the best conservation efforts of the park, Wild Wings is a sanctuary for rescued birds of prey. They take care of a wide variety of birds and give visitors a great opportunity to learn more about birds. This is their website-- https://www.wildwingsinc.com. I think it's important that people have a spot of nature that they really connect with, whether that be a section of a canal trail or a certain bench on an urban park. I didn't appreciate how much Mendon Ponds Park meant to me until I left for college. And now, it's one of the many things I am so excited to return to when I go home for the summer.