Cheesman Park

(entry for 11/27/2024)

Cheesman Park in Denver has always been one of my favorite places, from the first time I ever saw it, at age three or so, till the last time I saw it, about twelve years ago, now. If I saw it tomorrow I would still love it.

And all this in spite of the fact that it was the setting for my first ever, and worst ever, nightmare.

The Park, in real life and nightmare both, is long and narrow, running north to south. It’s two and half city blocks wide, and almost five blocks long. In other words, it’s almost a double square, but not quite. Its northeast corner is only five blocks away from the much more famous City Park, with its world-class zoo, duck pond, beautiful reflecting lake complete with band-shell and tour boat, Museum of National History, and semi-pro baseball field. But I prefer Cheesman.

It has four claims to fame. The first is that it has a magnificent Greek-columned style pavilion near the half way point of its eastern edge. The pavilion has a roof, but no walls—it’s open air to the sides and at the ends. Here’s a photo:

The pavilion is often the site of weddings. It offers the best of both outdoor and indoor facilities. There are nearly unobstructed views laterally, and yet there’s a very substantial roof over your head. In the unlikely event of rain, you can see the rain, but you can neither feel it nor hear it, not even when it’s a virtual waterfall— the roof is that thick!

The second famous feature is that it has the best view of the Front Range of the Rockies of any point anywhere in the city. You can see all the way from Pikes Peak far to the south to well north of Long’s Peak looking toward Wyoming. The photo here is from the east looking very slightly south of west. That’s Mount Evans, with its famous fourteen thousand foot elevation auto road, visible just to the right of the pavilion, between it and a tree.  (See the 1940 photo below.)

There is, or at least used to be, a ‘mountain finder’ just inside the west edge of the pavilion, where you could point a sighting device (not a telescope, merely a long metal bar on a swivel, toward a mountain image engraved on a horizontal map along the western edge of a large rectangular brass plate, and when you sighted along the top of the device, in line with the named peak on the map, you could see the actual mountain in question above the device. Very clever and useful. (The finder was still there at my last visit in 2011, but I can’t find it in any photo of the park online, so it may or may not exist now. If not, it would be a shame.)

The third feature is that every single tree in the park, of which there are dozens, has a name tag. A permanent metal plate is affixed to a small post in front of the tree trunk, that tells you what species of tree it is, giving both the scientific name and the common name. And there is such a huge variety of species that the Park is almost like a sort of living botanical text book. (The Denver Botanical Gardens is adjacent to the Park, on its east side, so if you want to extend your educational experience to more than just trees, it’s easy to do so.) To make sure the experience is available year round, the sign also shows what the leaf looks like, in case it isn’t there to see live in the middle of winter, which it most certainly won’t be, unless the tree is an evergreen. And if the tree bears fruit or nuts, or acorns, there’s a picture of that, as well.

And the fourth feature is that it’s rumored to be haunted. The whole park, but especially the pavilion. There have been numerous unearthly sightings and even more unearthly sounds. I’ve never been a witness to any of this sort of thing myself, but I haven’t ever needed to be, because all I have to do, to have an even more frightening experience, is close my eyes, pretend I’m four years old, and put myself mentally in Cheesman Park. Wherever I am at the moment in reality, I can be there at the drop of a hat. Or, in this case, the tread of a skeleton.

Three skeletons, actually. The dream starts with me standing just inside the lighted pavilion, at dusk.

Across the pool, and off to the left, not quite to the trees with their name plates, there is a trio of pure white skeletons walking around. Hither and thither, without reference to each other’s location or activity, but all terrifying, each is its own right. Their rib cages are illuminated from the inside, with indirect lighting, from steady invisible lights the same yellowish color as the ones in the pavilion. They make no sound as they walk, but their sightless eye sockets scan the grass sweeping from left to right, for sight of anything to eat. It never occurs to me, in the dream, that skeletons can’t eat. They have no stomachs for the food to go into. They have no jaw muscles with which to chew. They have no tongues or throats with which to swallow.

Turns out that this is not a problem, as I am soon to find out.

For some inexplicable reason, I am compelled to walk down the stairs to the lawn that is off to the left, south and west from the pavilion. I should be running as fast as I can go in the opposite direction, but I’m not. I am slowly and steadily approaching the nearest skeleton, who happens also to be the largest.

When he sees me with his sightless eyes, he stops moving, and waits for me to get close enough. Close enough to what? To grab me, that’s what! With his bony hands. He picks me up as though I weigh nothing, pops me into his mouth, and swallows me whole. No chewing needed.

As I slowly descend through his invisible digestive tract, he turns to look at the other two skeletons, one of which is male and the other female, though I have no idea how I know this. They have no genitalia or head-hair or voice pitches, or any other sort of designation. I just know. The one who has swallowed me is also male.

(In the photo at the top of this post, the pavilion is in shadow half way up the right hand side. The pool is in sunlight just to its left. The spot where I was picked up and swallowed is just about where the largish tree is in the middle of the lowest curve of lawn. There was no tree in that spot at the time. It has grown there in the intervening eighty years.)

The other two skeletons stop and return his gave, then resume their walking, evidently not bothered by, or interested in, the fact that he has swallowed me. When I reach the area of his pelvis, I suddenly fall out of him, onto the ground. The skeleton turns and walks slowly away. I wake up. The whole dream has taken only three or four minutes, but those have been the most dreadful three or four minutes of my entire life. And to this day all I have to do is close my eyes, make myself four years old, and think of Cheesman Park, and it all starts all over again. Any time I wish.

Which is seldom.

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