Lake Needwood, aside from being the lake and forestry that crept into my neighborhood, is a rather popular park. When one enters Lake Needwood from the road and not through the woods, things are more domestic. There’s a bathroom, a pavilion, a picnic area, all along the single strip of pavement that ventures far enough into the park. Further in you’ll find the docs where there are boat rentals.
With this distinction that you can see in just the modes of arrival at LakeNeedwood, there was always relative contemplation to it as a place. While on my own time, taking walks with friends and family through the woods of our neighborhood, LakeNeedwood was more a point of meditation than anything else. The same way Romantics in all those masterpiece classics would wander into nature, my english-teacher mother, bookworm sister, and I would also wander.
But with introduction to school, there were even class groups that would go to Lake Needwood as a field trip. Or friends who didn’t live in my Neighborhood but would still drive to Lake Needwood rather than wander. In this perspective, Lake Needwood was a city park, one made for entertainment and outings, where you might bring your kids to get in a paddle-boat or eat a pic-nic or even exercise.
There will always be this distinction about Lake Needwood, in that it exists as just a piece of land full of woods and accompanied by a lake, but also as park categorized by districting and bureaucratic-affiliation.
