The portal was made in a hidden but easily accessible junction where woods and abandoned lot meet. It is at the far end of an abandoned homeless camp. There is a fire pit built into the earth, and many cooking utensils are nearby (including a colander). In Seminole, "Immokalee" means "my campground" or "my home." What home is complete without a resplendent garden?
On a walk around the site, a friend and I found other campgrounds. Plenty of debritis, from materials discarded by drivers, to materials abandoned by construction companies. We cut the portal from bamboo--not to say that it is made from bamboo--we actually cut it from bamboo. A visual explanation:
I carried the Japanese saw in my backpack, and it felt great to saw through bamboo. With a Japanese saw.Instead of being sneaky, we walked the piece back to the site in plain sight, through an open field. Remember, we're "artists"--don't question something strange when an artist is involved. Would anyone notice, would anyone care? Did it matter that we were young, clean, white women doing this--would the outcome have been different if any of those factors were also different?
So we carried it, through the field, along a fallen tree, and finally where we wanted to put it. I busted out the bolt cutters I bought at a chain hardware store (pun not-intended, but appreciated) earlier that day. Also lied when buying these--they were totally for a sculpture, made with a roll of fence I found near my neighborhood! We feared being seen while cutting the opening, but we made it quickly enough. Snap, plink, snap, plink, snap, plink!Here is me being completely honest: I am overjoyed that this exists. Plans are for floral vines on the fence, a bit of a pathway into the center, more native butterfly and bee plants, and some edibles for us too. Soil remediation, soil remediation, soil remediation! Sunflowers and mustard greens, milkweed and cassias, fennel and Spanish nettle, pipe vine and Carolina jessamine, moonflower and morning glory.
Fences are intended to keep something in and something out. Fences are temptation for those who pine for permeation. This Ramshackle Park is adjacent to a plot of excess land aquired by the city. They call it a park, and it closes at dusk. A dry crater in the shap of a lake, surrounded by no fence, closes. At a beautiful time in the day. When does the park re-open? There is a difference between land assigned to the public as sometimes for them to enjoy, and land within a specific region that the people within that specific region claim as theirs to enjoy. When it comes from the bottom-up, and not top-down, there is the assumption that the people will also tend and love the land they claimed more than land they were told was sometimes theirs to use within certain parameters of usage.
This is how we left the portal, and this is how I will leave this post. John Muir wrote, "Between every two pine trees is a doorway to a new world." Here is a more familiar doorway, to our modern senses. It is yours to find, and ours to tend. And should you find it, think of how many feet have been on the land you find yourself in. In how many years, how many eyes have seen the world from that vantage?
