On Safari

At the skate park I am invisible.

Everyone inside the iron gate besides me is a boy aged 8 to 25. In theory I should stand out, but the opposite is true.

At one time, such invisibility would have caused me pain. As a girl I would have been standing there unnoticed, bleeding agony at their lack of interest. I feel a small bit of compassion for that awkward girl. But it’s just a glimmer and then it’s gone, replaced by joy as I celebrate the woman I now am.

A skate park may seem an odd place for a midlife woman to party independently, to revel in solitude. But I have my camera with me. It’s a new, expensive 8 mega pixel with a very grownup 12x zoom and I have been driving around looking at the long shadows cast by downtown Corpus Christi, trying to find something to shoot with it. On impulse, I drove to the skate park. I felt a pang of fear in the parking lot as I saw those 40 or so boys and above them, almost visible, a heavy cloud of testosterone.

Then I imagined I was on safari and had just spied a herd of elephants rumbling across the Kalahari. The cloud above them, desert dust. Frightening, yes. But what beauty. What magnificence. I crept out of my car and up to the edge of the concrete pool like it was full of alligators instead of pubescent boys. They snapped and grimaced at each other, but took no notice of me. I am not a threat to them and in the posing, posturing world of boys pursuing something athletic and alternative, if you’re not a threat, you don’t exist.

My heart races as one plunges off the edge of the pool and crouches down. He gains speed and goes vertical up the other side. Snap! He turns the board and plunges again, like he’s riding a wave of cool, Pacific water instead of slick, gray concrete. I quietly remove the lens cap and take aim. Regarding them as wildlife in their natural habitat, I find them charming. I am a naturalist, thrilled to have arrived at this watering hole in the desert undetected. I am an anthropologist, privileged to be documenting a culture that has let me in without ceremony, without changing the way they really commune.

I couldn’t have done this at any other time in my life. I am completely immersed in the moment. I feel as alive and exuberant as the one who has just caught air and landed smoothly. No one acknowledges his great feat, but he knows. He owns the skate park.