Historic Thompson Park has been a positive force in my life, for nearly four decades. I have lived in three homes in Watertown, and all of them have been within a mile of this amazing public space. Many of our city’s residents do not know how lucky we are, to have such a tremendous public area for our use; Watertown is the smallest city in America to have a park designed by Olmstead, the landscape architecture firm responsible for famous outdoor spaces like Manhattan’s Cental Park, and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The park’s paved walkways, and unpaved trails, allow for constitutionals and hikes that can calm the mind and body, or energize them, depending on the chosen path. A journey along the paved walkways will bring you in contact with stone walls and structures cut from the park’s very own rock quarry, and an adventure through the unpaved trails will allow you to take in the diverse flora and fauna that populate the densely wooded areas. What I love to share the most on Google Maps, are spherical 360 photographs of this crown jewel of our city, using the Google Street View app. I have been shooting these images of this park on a regular basis for the past couple years, and I have no plans of stopping any time soon. Through the four seasons, I make my way across all the various areas of the park, documenting them, and the way they change, as the trees grow back their leaves, and when they let them go again. Last week, an arborist that works for the city came up to me, and told me that he references my photographs often, for the purpose of identifying what types of trees are in which areas of the park; I will admit, that I certainly felt a swell of pride, and welling up of positive energy when he told me this. I hope that many other people have been informed and entertained by the images I create for Google Maps and Google Street View. An exciting aspect of this continued visual documentation, is a feature of Google Street View called auto connect. When Street View finds multiple photographs in close proximity to each other, by the same contributor, they become linked by white arrows, that can be tapped, to move from one image to the next. When a person has been documenting an area for an extended period, these links start to move, not only through space, but also through time; I found myself recently, tapping an arrow in a winter image, and finding myself transported to a summer image. This type of motion, through space and time, drives my desire to see how far these links can stretch. Perhaps years from now, tapping one of these white arrows, will bring me back to today. With that being said, I am off to the park…
