If you’re anything like me, you’ve occasionally wondered what it would be like if local parks became anthropomorphic creatures and fought to the death in a gladiator-style battle royale. Let’s break it down.
Now, the arena is only so large, so it’s hard to narrow down the list of fighters to five. I chose fighters for their size and prevalence: Stephens Lake Park, Rock Bridge Memorial State Park, Columbia Cosmopolitan Recreation Area — or, as his friends call him, “Cosmo” — Pinnacles Youth Park and the combination of Grindstone Nature Area and Capen Park, henceforth referred to simply as Capen Park to save breath.
Stephens Lake Park is forcibly entered into the battle for the enjoyment of the audience. The concrete sidewalks and cute man-made pond make this golf-course-turned-dog-walking-park formidable only to uncoordinated children that fall off its colorful plastic playground equipment. Stephens Lake Park is easily dispatched by the knife-like peaks that are Pinnacles’ limestone cliffs.
Like Stephens Lake Park, Pinnacles is also for children, except Pinnacles isn’t fucking around. Its 77 acres of natural wildlife and fiercely sharp cliffs are privately owned but still open to the public by day. With no glaring weaknesses, Pinnacles unsheathes its jagged limestone from Stephens Lake Park’s feeble corpse and begins the hunt for the blood of Cosmo Park.
Cosmo is easily the most fit of any park. Its sprawling soccer, softball and football fields, tennis courts, skate park and outdoor roller rink have toned it to its core. Cosmo’s shapeliness is attractive and healthy, making it the drooling envy of all the lady parks. Unfortunately, what Cosmo gains in rigid athletic roboticism, it lacks in true ruggedness, its hairless body sparsely populated with trees for poor wind coverage. Endurance is plentiful, however, and it manages to slowly tire out Pinnacles while the remaining two natural behemoths duke it out on the side.
Those two behemoths, Capen Park and Rock Bridge, have similar builds. Both robust warriors of nature, the two are equipped with sturdy walls of rock and acres of natural forestry. Capen’s disadvantage is its lankiness, what with its perilously high cliff face — carved by the Hinkson Creek — dominating the view of the park. Rock Bridge has similar rocky heights, but its sheer size gives it an overall lower center of gravity, making it a more able frame for wrestling.
Rock Bridge’s fame and massive edge in size — 10 times that of Capen — makes it the favorite. What Capen Park soon discovers, however, is the weak soil underlying Rock Bridge. The karst landscape created by underground rivers and caves, as seen at the Devil’s Icebox, has made it prone to sinkholes easily punched out over centuries of time. These weak knees are swiftly taken advantage of by Capen Park, felling the giant Rock Bridge and making the crowd go absolutely nuts.
By now it is getting late, which tragically for Pinnacles Youth Park means it’s closing time for any adult group. Unable to vanquish Cosmo Park by this time, it wavers for a moment, stumbles to its knees and is immediately thrown to its death by Capen into the massive rock quarry that hides behind Cosmo Park.
Two remain: the confusingly similar names of Cosmo and Capen Parks. Capen is burly, rigid and slow but infinitely more powerful than Cosmo’s artificial sheen. Cosmo, having failed to actively claim a single victim in the battle, unconfidently attempts the same agility strategy it employed against Pinnacles. Cosmo’s devastating mistake is its failure to account for the protruding bedrock that litters the trails of Capen Park, and it soon trips headlong over these limestone speed bumps. Cosmo quickly turns its body around just in time to see the giant foot of Capen instantly crushing it. Cosmo’s flattened remains are left to wash away down Capen’s Hinkson Creek.
