Buses rumble by. The workaday city shakes itself awake. Quickly, it seems, the pulse and population around Lake Merritt change. Traffic floods the boulevards that surround it. Footpaths fill with folk.
Rowers pull their way across the waters.
In the space of a few moments the lake is transformed from a wildly silent realm into a populous and shared kingdom, a place where people come to socialize, recharge, and regroup - 145 acres of hard working natural space fulfilling the needs of a community. It hasn t been this way for long. Framed by thousands of acres of surrounding tidal marsh, the slough occupied 500 watery acres at high tide and 375 acres of mudflats when the tide was low. Alder, sycamore, live oaks, and California bays lined the banks of the streams that emptied into it. Herds of deer, elk, and pronghorn antelope grazed the grasslands around it.