Veterans Oasis Park

Author's Comments

Chandler does not advertise this place, and I think that is part of its quiet charm. Veterans Oasis is the kind of park you find by accident on a winter morning when you have given up on the more obvious destinations, and what you find is a constructed wetland that has been doing its slow ecological work long enough to feel like it was always there. I came first in January, just after sunrise. The light in the East Valley at that hour has a particular cleanness to it, free of the dust that builds up by afternoon, and the ponds at the southeast edge of the park were holding the sky almost perfectly. A great blue heron stood in the shallows looking like he had been there since the Pleistocene. Coots paddled around without apparent purpose. An egret lifted off the water in the middle distance and I did not raise the camera in time, which is how it usually goes. The photography here is not dramatic. The light is gentle, the subjects are small, and the compositions ask you to slow down and look at edges - the line where reed meets reflection, the place where a heron's leg disappears into still water. Bring a longer lens. Bring patience. The solar system walk is a curiosity more than a subject, but the paved paths make it easy to move quietly between the ponds. I would not drive across the state for this park. But if you are in Chandler on a winter morning and you want an hour with the birds and the soft desert light and almost no one else, this is where I would send you.

Gallery