The Delta Ponds are former gravel pits, strung between a freeway and a shopping mall, a band of apartments and retirement homes, a batch of car dealerships. It’s a made place, and also a natural one. Reclaimed, reconstructed. It’s an attempt to re-complicate just slightly the once braided, now restricted course of the Willamette River. 
It seems we never visit the museums close to home, or take the hikes: I’ve been meaning to visit the Delta Ponds for years. They’re not that close to me, really–I don’t drive out to the mall that often. And once I’m in the car and heading hikeward, it’s easy to keep going, to drive a long way. Go to the mountains. But it’s worth exploring more thoroughly the near and dear; I admire people who know their local landscapes well.
So off I went, early September, hot, late afternoon, full sun. Parked in a small gravel lot that held one other car when I arrived. Paths to left and right (it’s not a loop). A sign at the edge of the parking lot described efforts to eradicate the invasive Ludwigia hexapetala (also called Uruguayan primrose willow), a plant the sign suggested might have been introduced when someone dumped a home aquarium into the pond, live plants and all. No mention of the critters that might have been in that hypothetical aquarium. Perhaps they didn’t survive. But again, making and unmaking, human damage and human effort to restore. 
What struck me first was the contrast: Pond surface stillness taut against the freeway roar. Walking beside a tall, blackberry covered berm, I could hear the cars close by, just out of sight. But the longer I walked, the more I could hear birds and insects over (under?) he cars.
Signs of building here and there in fraying landscape fabric, chalky gravel, ragged grow-tubes protecting slender trees. Signs of other builders, too–a muddle of artfully-laid sticks across a creek bend hinted at the presence of beaver. (I saw neither nutria nor beaver, though I’ve read the ponds are home to both.)
This was nature in the middle of town and don’t you forget it–that freeway noise was never far away, and the garish reflections of road signs in the water, and the graceful arch of a footbridge. Banners urging future apartment dwellers to MOVE IN TODAY! were visible 
between a big leaf maple’s yellow leaves. The park wasn’t crowded, but I passed quite a few people with their phones, with their friends, with their dogs. One man setting up a tripod, another reading a book in his car.
Cool, warm wind. Smooth rattle of the not yet dry leaves. Geese hunched like rocks on the marshy shore. Mainly greens, browns, and 
grays–late summer colors–but a burst of pink here and there, a late flower, a sweet pea. Pond turtles basking on a log, a single great blue heron. Exuberant dried thistles. Once, the loud, fast clatter of a kingfisher. 
And there were dragonflies. Bright red. Insistent in landing and leaving and landing again on the same upright twig. The better for me to mess with camera settings. Lean in, lean closer. Wait.
When I think dragonfly, I think purple, iridescent blue, deep emerald green. The red was a surprise. The ponds were a surprise, too, especially the still quiet within the noise.
