It’s nice, and a little astonishing, to discover a park you didn’t know in your part of the suburbs, especially when it’s pleasant to walk through. I’ve been in the northwest suburbs going on two decades, yet I had no notion of Abrahamsen Park until the other day.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I regularly drive by one part of the park, which fronts a small but important road, and from that vantage you can see the park’s baseball diamond, basketball court, tennis court and playground. All those things are available closer to home — and it’s been years since I’ve needed a playground — so I never gave Abrahamsen much thought.

Turns out there’s a walking path as well. It begins behind those facilities and runs a quarter mile or so along a small creek through a neighborhood. That is, through fenceless back yards facing the creek and walking path. I expect it’s known almost only to people who live nearby, so hidden is it. As I walked, I reveled in the obscurity of it.

This time of the year, even in a dry June, the way along the creek is lush.

At one end are towering trees.

Eastern cottonwoods (Populus deltoides), I think, and I won’t pretend I didn’t have to look that up.