Cover Photo: Children's wading pond / photo courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries
Children's wading pond / photo courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries

We Go to the Park to Go Somewhere Else: On Houston’s Green Havens

You’re in the city, but you aren’t. You don’t have to spend any money. No one’s asking about your documentation. You don’t have to do much at all except for exist, and open your eyes.

Discovery Green Park, Houston / photo by Erion Shehaj via flickr

Through all of our everything, there’s a stupefying chunk of nothing; but for all of that emptiness, you’re likely to find a green space. Houston never misses an opportunity to dedicate them. There’s Hermann Park, by the zoo. There’s George Bush Park in the suburbs, stretching just under eight thousand acres. You’ve got Moody Park on the Northside, and Market Square Park downtown, and you’ve got folks so ingrained in the city’s lore that they’ll rattle another nine or ten offhand. Which is hardly uncommon.

Gateway Fountain at Discovery Green in downtown Houston / photo by Paul Duron

Miller Outdoor Theatre, Hermann Park, Houston / photo by Deepak Bawa via Wikimedia

But of course she started walking. Most of us do.

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 Hermann Park Kite Festival, 2017 / photo by Michael Slaten via Wikimedia

Houston sunset / photo by Yinan Chen via Wikimedia


Bryan Washington is the author of Lot, with fiction and essays appearing in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The Paris Review, Boston Review, Tin House, One Story, Bon Appétit, MUNCHIES, American Short Fiction, GQ, FADER, The Awl, Hazlitt, and Catapult. He’s the recipient of an O. Henry Award, and he lives in Houston.