Only time can 'grow' a rocky park, but Avondale is a desirable template | MARK HUGHES COBB

To park it means you got hot, saw the cookie, tasted the meatball, chased the gopher, wielded the wood, shot the moon and kissed Mr. Spalding goodbye. Launching pad and splashdown: Baseball park and parking lot.

So park your car, park the pitch or park your carcass, but you know what park means, right?

Picture one.

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Depending on your sojourns, you may have conjured majestic expanses from Yellowstone, blue-misty bewitchment woven through Great Smoky Mountains, family getaways at nearby Lake Lurleen, the rowlf and romp of dogs at Sokol, or visions of venerable Queen City Park, its Deco-flowing fountain, the pool and funky glass-brick bathhouse, still faintly visible beneath restored veneer into the transportation museum.

Since the pandammit began, I've spent more time in parks than theaters, coffee shops and bookstores, walking the many miles we're fortunate to have unroll under our feet. My mind slips to stretches of our loping Riverwalk, and down to the lower level of the Park at Manderson Landing, where for 20 years a group of wacky performer-kids, including me, have played Shakespeare in the summers.

Spoiler: Shakespeare wins.

But maybe you've been on a movie binge, or recent Big Apple jaunt, zooming in on romance, drama and comedic-romance, tinged by occasional hideous tragedy, within Manhattan's sprawling 843-acre Central Park, most-visited urban green space in the U.S.

Yearly it accommodates 42 million (five times the NYC population) promenading in horse-drawn carriages; ice-skating on Wollman Rink; ambling around the Ramble and Lake; riding the carousel or visiting the zoo; soaking in ― metaphorically ― the Angel of the Waters statue, central to Bethesda Terrace fountain; visiting old and younger masters at the Met; or, linking to the Rude Mechanicals, enjoying Shakespeare in the Park productions at the 1,800-seat open air Delacorte Theater. That's where, in 1954, Joseph Papp essentially created the idea of free summer Shakespeare under a sky canopy.

The fault lies not under the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underpaid. That is to say, unpaid. Seriously, we've batted around notions ― Don't folks assume something free isn't worth it? ― and went with Papp's risk that many enjoy a no-charge midsummer's evening out, when it's not sweltering.

Manderson Landing we chose due to the slope, suggestive of amphitheater seating. But it's not terraced, more just, as Gaga says, grown that way. With little at our backs other than river, boats happen. Cap'ns enjoy blasting "Woot! Dey it is!" as Macduff tumbles in despair, on learning his kids were massacred. Woot! Dey is dead!

Cool breezes, crescent moons, nascent fireflies; friends lounging on blankets and sharing comestibles, that's all the scintillating atmosphere anyone could wish.

Bullfrogs in heat, 'skeeters in kamikaze mode and grasshoppers dazzled by electric lights, leaping to break their own legs while seeking our mouths, not so much. You might not think it, being as we're hunkered down, and 150 or so feet from Jack Warner Parkway, but road noise is a major problem.

There's no one image of park, no one fixed set of goods. It can focus on athletics and recreation; leisurely strolling, camping and cookouts; gardens and landscaping; attractions and distractions; or humanity's greatest gift and grift, goof. Or Goofy. I'm thrilled we're getting PopStroke, as those who stroke, and, uh, pop, think it's gonna be a sweet boon. But my links best be broken by a ragged, dragging but never-ending tail dangling from a 16-foot monkey with glowing red eyes, or I'll want my blue-striped ball back for another go-'round.

I love animals, especially my spirits: German Shepherd, elephant, orangutan, blue-footed booby and subfamily Erinaceinae, which shall ne'er deign to share the hedge. I'm wary of zoos, but also crazy in love with them, because where else am I going to stand with herds of zebras, lumps of librarians, prides of heffalumps? Aside from Disney World's Animal Kingdom, that is, and if I ever win the lottery to visit the Hohenwald, Tenn. sanctuary.

So I'm a bag of mixed nuts about parks. I crave the Middle Earth-ian naturalism of Avondale Park, roughly carved from Red Mountain, moss lacing its terraced stone steps, walls and amphitheater area; trees swaying overhead, ducks quacking from natural springs around which the joint was built.

But man, we need power, too. And bathrooms. And if not concrete things to do ― batting cages, rollercoasters, pick-a-duck waterfalls, haunted houses ― then at least infrastructure to support entertainment.

Sunday's free, live-music Get-Down in Avondale Park beckoned me. Impossibly lovely crowd. Low humidity (autocorrect wanted to say "low nudity," but I ain't judgmental like that), 80 as the sun sank. Maybe a shade too much patchouli-stank, but otherwise idyllic.

Tuscaloosa doesn't have an Avondale Park yet, though the Queen City project once leaned that way. Our parks system is strong and diverse, operating multitudinous functions. Leaders seem to mostly understand we want to merge with, rather than submerge, our world. But in the process of creating a space ― especially when building atop ages-old landfill, used to even a riverbank's wavering topography ― too often nature's denuded, and what emerges resembles more a football practice field, or picturesque postcard, than an organic house of play.

An Avondale Park doesn't happen overnight. That system's been developed, re-developed, and refurbished since the 19th century. But our future green space creators should look, through back-in-time Viewmasters, to what once was, to imagine how it may come to be. An old Greek playwright-philosopher: “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”

I look forward to becoming an increasingly older man, to glimpse, and perhaps help plant, our future shade.

Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Avondale Park's natural beauty shines through | MARK HUGHES COBB