I do enjoy expansive city parks.  Ones where you can easily get lost amidst miles of rock and tree.  But sometimes it’s even more enjoyable to turn a corner or peak around a building and come upon a small park, hidden from the raging world around it.

Paris has a good number of these sorts of parks.

And while Portland does have an array of  “lose yourself in nature” type parks, it was the variation of the smaller, neighborhood parks that has really attracted my attention.

Take the admittedly experimental Tanner Springs Park in the pic above.  It was designed to recall the wetlands that formerly existed in this newly developed area of Portland.  As you can see in the pic below, residents can sit on the steps surrounding the park and on the small patch of green on the park’s northern boundary.   The park’s greatest current threat are the neighborhood dogs, who could easily over pollute the park’s waters, allowing algae to take over.

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