Short Wave - One Park. 24 Hours.

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

It's easy to take city parks for granted, or to think of them as separate from nature and from the Earth's changing climate. But the place where many of us come face-to-face with climate change is our local park. On today's episode, Ryan Kellman and Rebecca Hersher from NPR's Climate Desk team up with Short Wave producer Margaret Cirino to spend 24 hours in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. How you doing? I'm good. How are you? I thought you wanted my autograph. So a few weeks ago, I spent the day in Philadelphia. Like, literally one day, that was the assignment. Spend 24 hours in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia and record everything that happens.

I'm standing outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art on those steps where we're Rocky was filmed, that iconic scene, except I haven't seen the movie. And it's really, really hot out. It's so hot. I'm sweating. Yeah, 24 hours. To be clear, this was not my idea. Yeah, I'm sorry. It was my idea. Sort of. Mine are Rebecca's. Yeah, I'm Rebecca Hersher. I'm a reporter on the NPR team that covers climate change. And I'm Ryan Kelman. I'm a producer and photographer on that team. I'm Margaret Serino, a producer on Shortwave. And we asked you, Margaret, to join us because we needed your help, because we were trying to capture something that's just, it's really big, it's really hard to capture. What climate change feels like.

Yeah, this all started with a pretty simple idea. You know, most people in the U.S. live in cities. Actually, at least 80% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, and they rely on city parks for their connection to nature. Which means that city parks are one of the places where most Americans actually feel climate change happening. Yeah. I think it's really easy to take city parks for granted because they feel so ordinary. They don't feel like they're on the front lines of climate change. And when we do that, I think we lose sight of the way most of us actually experience climate change. Yeah.

Because global warming is happening everywhere and to everyone. It's happening right outside our windows, not just in far-off locales. Yes, and what is right outside your window? Your local park. I get it. Yay. Yeah, we wanted to zoom all the way in on one city park on a hot summer day, and we chose this park in Philadelphia.

And we spent 24 hours there with just our audio recorders. And it's hairy. And so you have to sit down. I got chicken liver. I got worms. I got an egg eating dinosaur? So that's it. Today on the show, 24 hours in the life of one city park. The good, the bad, the weird, and the surprising. You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR. We want to share a huge thank you to all of our plus subscribers. Subscriptions are a great way to support our show. You can

get sponsor-free versions of all the episodes and our gratitude. Subscribe at plus.mpr.org slash shortwave. Okay, so we started at noon on Friday and a couple things to know about Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. First of all, it is gigantic, one of the biggest city parks in the U.S. Second, we went on a super hot day, like over 90 degrees, August. So we were a little worried that nobody actually would be there because, you know, it was super hot. But we were wrong. Rebecca and Brando.

Nice to meet you. Brando from the Abando, 2-15. Do you come here often? Yeah. I go to Payne's skate park. And when it's too hot, I just come down here and chill out. Jump in the fountain. It's great.

What do you like about it? The fountain? Yeah. Oh. I love this fountain, man. It's really like just, it's chill. But like on the weekends, you know, be careful. It's Philly.

Can I ask you all for directions? Directions to where? I'm just trying to get to the rock garden. You're already lost? You know, Rebecca, hush. No, I'm actually glad I got a little lost there because I started talking to this couple for directions. And they were super nice,

even though I kind of got in their business a bit, like asking what they were up to. I'm going to tell them what it really is, what we really do it, that you really see. Does it matter? Is it uncensored? No, I mean, yes. No, like, be straight.

Yeah, be straight. Well, you know, we're chilling, trying to talk, and, you know, smoke some good weed. Enjoy the nature. There's people that are dead that can't do this. Yeah. So, locked up. But yeah, man, you know, take it all in.

You know what I'm saying? Philly's ugly, but it's beautiful too. Yeah. So I am Zamila. I'm the owner of them. So I'm just selling food. I got some fish, sticky wing, jerk. It's real good.

Excuse me? You thought you could jump up there and get our home? So by this time it's about 7 p.m. and still pretty hot out. We wanted to go to a more tree-e place. Tree-e. If that makes sense? Yes. Yeah, tree-e.

Because green spaces, tree-filled places, are a lot cooler than spaces that have a lot of pavement and buildings. Yeah. Yeah, like we know this from our reporting. They can be five, even 10 degrees cooler in some cases, which is a huge difference. And climate scientists and urban planners will tell you, that's one reason that everyone who lives in a city should really have access to green space, especially as heat waves get more common with climate change. So we went to a bit of a more lush part of the park between a river and a busy road,

just to see who was out. It was definitely a lot cooler. And the first person I interviewed had a lot to say about the ecology of the park in his own particular way. Okay, I'll tell you my name. My name's Jack, but my real name, is John Barry Bloor. John Barry Blowers? Uh-huh.

Okay. All right, John Barry, hit me. There's always trees in the park. You know? If there were no trees, there wouldn't be any air. And also, like... Not to be dramatic, but I am in love with John Barry. Yeah, yeah, me too.

That's fair. We talked for a long time. Oh my God. And my house is near by a park. There were a lot of people in this area just hanging out as the sunset. Well, my name is Jelani. Right now we are looking at the water. We are on the edge of the Schoolkill River.

It's like a getaway out of the city. Even with all the hustle and bustle of gentrification. School, crime. bills and just life in general you know yeah what do you think about

when you look out at this river I think about my family I think about peace I think about the light at the end of the tunnel I think about people that I have lost

and things that I plan on gaining let's go look out here right side hey bro Hey, bro. Okay, so by now the sun had gone down. Streetlights were on. Yeah, and I was deep in the park at this point.

There wasn't really anyone around, and I found some grass, and I just lay down. Lucky you. Mm, bats. Wait, Rebecca, you saw a fox? Yeah, it was pretty cool. It was, like, silhouetted by the moon, or maybe it was a street light. and also a reminder that a lot of animals live in city parks. Like in the 24 hours that we were in Fairmount Park, I saw two foxes, actually, a bunch of

cottontail rabbits, a Cooper's Hawk, multiple types of ducks. It felt like a wild place, not just a human place. Man. Although, you know, even after midnight, there were a lot of people still out and about. There was a wedding party that had just wrapped up. People were on dates. Yeah, yeah. but if you wanted it, you can definitely still find places in the park to be totally alone.

So take a moment. Listen to these animals communicating with each other, calling out for mates, marking territory. This is the sound of nature in the city. One really surprising thing that I heard, flying squirrels, they live in this park, they're nocturnal, and they chirp at night. Okay, so we didn't actually sleep in the park. We left for a few hours. Maybe 1.30 to 4.30. Yeah, not very long to sleep. But one thing I noticed was that in those few short hours, the animal sounds in the park changed dramatically.

For one thing, the speed of the crickets call increases when it's warmer. And we arrived back in the park right at sunrise when it was warming up. I'm really tired. You know who is wide awake at the 6 a.m. hour in Fairmount Park? I mean, not me, obviously. So true. So embarrassing. I actually meant like rowers.

Like people in boats. Oh, sure. They see it all at the crack of dawn out on the water. Are you about to launch your boat? I am. I've never gotten into this part, so we're going to try. All right. Coolest thing we've seen this early in the morning.

Besides dead bodies? How many of those have you found? Two. Two. Well, two in 25 years is not bad. Some guys leave balls around and that's... Matter of fact, these two I just hit, I just found. One over there.

No, that's not the ball. No, that's not in. All right. There's one right here. I think this is the best feature of this entire city. The parks. And in the city, you have so many row houses. Everybody's on top of each other. So you come here and you de-stress, you know.

So by mid-morning, I was, was greeting the sun, as I do. Hello, son. And it was getting kind of muggy again. The park was, like, filling up with people doing Saturday stuff, you know, riding bikes, walking dogs. There was a softball team practicing for something called the Gay World Series. Yeah, and right near where they were practicing, the guys from a local social lodge were setting up for a huge cookout. Oh, that sounds good.

Parks are social places, and that's one of the coolest things about them. Studies actually show that being outside can help relieve feelings of sadness, stress, and isolation. Is there something about being outside specifically, like being in nature that changes the way you relate to other people? The air. He's breathing the air. The air, the sun, the dirt. Yeah. You know? Especially for the last two years for me in particular, because I've been working from home since the pandemic.

So it's nice to be able to get outside and actually see people, rather than just see them on Zoom. hear them over the phone. That's great. Oh, great. It's nice that there's so much access to water in the parks. Well, we're lucky because we live out here. We see that tunnel right there? We live on the right side and a tent.

Oh. How is that for you? It's great because we're under the bridge so we're like protected from water and it's cool. So protected from the heat. And then we have occasional, well, you see we have visitors. Sometimes we come home when we find people smoking meth. in our area. A gang high.

Yeah, sometimes we find that. But mostly we've not really been robbed. For the most part, nobody really bothers us. And for the most part, and we have another friend that we come to. Okay, folks, so our 24 hours in Fairmont Park is coming to an end, sadly. So what do you say? Let's take a moment to reflect on what we learned from our time in the park. I think for me, my big takeaway is that you can actually have really interesting conversations with people you don't know.

you just need the spaces to have them. Totally. For me, honestly, my big takeaway is just that animals are out there living their animal lives in the city. These are legitimately wild spaces. Parks are nature and humans are a part of that nature. These are our little oases for those of us who live in urban areas. Yes, to all of that.

Parks are really important places. And as the world gets hotter, they're only going to become more important. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Very true. Okay. And with that, we have not fully finished our journey. Yes. So it is time to return to where we began. It's going on noon. And we need to go to the Museum of Art, the Steps, the Steps at the Southern End of the Park, where Margaret started her journey on Friday. Yeah, yeah. Otherwise known as the Rocky Steps. Also, it's literally the hottest part of the whole park. There's like no trees anywhere. Ryan, are we going to run up these steps? I mean, we're here.

It feels like somebody has to run up the steps. You said somebody, not yourself. It is very hot. All these people have Italian ice and I don't. I'll run up the steps with you. What if we don't go up there and we just stop at this whole ice cream stand is set? Okay, you ready? All right.

Set? Go. This is producer Margaret Serino back at high noon. Once again, and it's Saturday now. To learn more about our reporting on climate change in city parks, check out the link in the show notes. You'll see beautiful photos that Ryan took in city parks all over the country and learn more facts about how your local city park helps fight climate change. This episode was produced by me, Margaret Serino. And me, Rebecca Hersher.

And me, Ryan Kelman. It was edited by Gabriel Spitzer, fact-checked by Rebecca Ramirez, and the audio engineer was Gilly Moon. Giselle Grayson is our senior supervising editor, our senior director of programming is Beth Donovan, and the senior vice president of programming is Anya Grenman. Special thanks to Emily Kwong, Daniel Wood, and Nila Bannergy. You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR.