For my first dose of Minneapolis culture, I took a walk through the sculpture garden leading to the Walker Arts Center. It appeared that Minnesota had as late a start to spring as we’ve had in upstate New York. The walk that led to the sculpture garden, normally a garden itself, was brown and dried, waiting for the warmth and the wet that was nowhere in evidence. Beauty was about, even in the dead stand of cat-tails by the water, or in the solitary ginger-bread-like styled cottage along the way.
A bridge was decorated by a poem that ran its entire length. It’s a thrill seeing words and poetry utilized in such a manner. I’d like to see a poem on every walking bridge. Here, one could read and walk and contemplate the bridge at hand, and the bridges that came before and after.
A ghostly sculpture of an empty coat sat defying the wind, while a barren arbor lent architectural structure to the sky. Withered vines of sweet autumn clematis lay fallen at the arbor’s columns, but soon they would begin their return skyward, covering up to forty feet in a single summer season.
But that work was weeks away. For now, in the few days between an old job and a new one, the only signs of something stirring were in the brave and courageous Scilla that were just starting to poke through the ground.
Even the bright metallic jumble of red steel and a crimson cherry paled in comparison to the coming spring.
Nature trumps garish human creation every time.
