Urbana’s Gem: Meadowbrook Park

           I love Meadowbrook Park. I’ve been going there for so long that the memories are all blurred together. Places are like songs in that they hold memories, particularly the first experience you have associated with that place and song. Where were you, how old were you, what was your life like at this time? Places and songs can transport you to a completely different part of your life, especially if you haven’t revisited them recently. However, if you visit a place or listen to a song enough times, eventually you lose that first specific memory, and it just becomes a feeling of home, comfort, and familiarity. That is what Meadowbrook is for me. I don’t remember my first time there, but I have eras of memories attached to the place.

           Along the outside of the playground is a pathway made of concrete tiles with little handprints on them. I have no idea how they decided which kids got to decorate a tile, but I always wanted to make one, to leave my place on the park. Most of them are dated from the mid-90s, with little colorful gems and marbles stuck in the hardened concrete. I always wonder where these children are now, they must be fully grown adults with lives of their own by now.

           The playground itself consists of an intricate wooden structure, with little pathways and hallways under different platforms and levels leading to slides and balance beams and firepoles and ropes and sandboxes. Little me had little corners and secret hideouts I played in when given free roam. One such hideout in particular I remember, was a hidden ledge filled with sand. I sat there and pretended there was a nest of baby bunnies that I took care of. I definitely couldn’t find this corner now, it was an intricate path I took to get there, and I have recently tried to find to it no avail.

           Behind the playground is a big open field perfect for flying kites. On windy spring days my dad used to take my brother and I there. It was always exciting to get to use our kites. We bought them at a kite shop in Boulder, Colorado and rarely got to use them. Mine was a parrot, red, with rainbow tail feathers flying behind it. My dad taught me how to fly a kite there, showing me the thrill when it finally catches the wind and levels out and you can relax a little bit instead of worriedly waiting for it to take a nosedive.

           In my later childhood, Meadowbrook became the birthplace for my love of running. During 3rd grade, my friends and I met there twice a week after school, on Mondays and Wednesdays, to go running. There are many trails to explore at Meadowbrook, but we usually stuck to the main one. The sidewalk path was good to run on regardless of the weather, and the loop itself was a good mile and a half that we could run fairly consistently. On the back side of Meadowbrook Park, is a big field of prairie grass. Every time I go there and see that prairie land, I remember learning to love running there. If you go in the evening, often you’ll see deer, once I even saw a group run across the sidewalk right in front of me. When I pass the statue of the naked lady, I always remember my friend telling me during a run that her brother would always go up and jokingly hit the butt on the statue.

           I rarely go to Meadowbrook nowadays, except for using the loop to add mileage to my runs. Yet, it serves as a land marker of a staple of my childhood every time I drive past it. The open prairie is a preservation of what Illinois used to be, with statues interspersed along the path to highlight the arts. To me this is the epitome of what I love about Urbana: the arts, nature, and preservation of history.