Forest Park in Springfield

I bring the dog there just about every morning before work. I park in an informal dirt parking area on the Longmeadow side, and we walk down a paved hill into the park, where we circle a series of ponds with trails around their peripheries. There's a short boardwalk below which dozens -- hundreds? -- of Mallard ducks eat their weight in stale Wonder bread, or so it seems. On the other side of the road from the boardwalk are the snow geese, who also demand a share of bread with an air of righteousness and entitlement. There's a resident Great Blue Heron, a kingfisher, a muskrat, snapping turtles, and -- I've heard -- coyotes. Also, of course, people -- power walking, biking, skateboarding, exercising their dogs, keeping the ducks and geese in complex carbohydrates. Each of us comes to the park with a trajectory in mind -- a loop, with the car as both Point A and Point B -- and we follow it as conscientiously as if laying fence, then spin off into other orbits.

Except for the tall, thin, haunted man I see in the mornings, now, who parks his Volvo and circles the lily ponds, delicately, tentatively, like a marionette, leaving small circles of bread crumbs at intervals on the pavement.