In an effort to investigate the place of my connection to land, I chose a site within Golden Gate Park to function as a surrogate for that initial stomping ground: a territory for identity formation, development of the senses, and exposure to a conflation of the natural and cultural.
The area of the park west of 19th avenue, away from tourist destinations functions more as a local backyard, and a kind of illegal urban commons that some call home. The specific areas I am focusing on are the undefined spaces, the liminal zones that have grown their own histories and definitions through use and inhabitation. These are small stands of trees, areas off jogging paths where there is no defined way to enter or experience the area. For most, these areas function as scenery, and are rarely penetrated.
The Park has served as San Francisco’s collective backyard since its inception in 1866. With a boom in business and population, American society sought a balance between the urban and natural worlds, and felt a yearning for the simpler past. There was clearly a need for a remote space to provide an escape from work lives, and industrialization. The park soon became an antidote to the citizens’ materialistic ambitions.
The land that makes up the park is part of what was originally called the Outside Lands, an expanse of wind blown sand dunes considered undesirable and uninhabitable. What made the park the green expanse it is now was largely water, lots of topsoil, human labor, and a plant from every country in the world, except Bolivia (Pollock). Like most backyards, the verdant park we now know is a fantastical human construct, a natural fiction.
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