Urban Wilderness Areas – Page 5 – State of Wilderness

Things with Wings

This past week, we’ve been getting out and stretching our tendons, strengthening muscles weary from winter rests. It’s been a beautiful week, with mild temperatures and sunny skies. Birds have been tweeting sweet temptations from the trees, and we desired to go see the things they spoke of – branches, berries, bits of brittle wheat grass and little insects hopping on a forest floor.

And so we ended up at Addick’s Reservoir.

We were in search of the Elements – not just wind, water, earth and fire, although we did find the first three (and signs of a past fourth). No, this time we were seeking Copper and Zinc, as in two of the natural earth elements that are featured on the cache pages of these two in the Elements series by Z Malloc. These were two in a line that I could have gotten in a cache run on President’s Day some years ago, but couldn’t because they were past the water line.

Today we took a path that led down the side of the reservoir and towards the edge of the water line. Then we turned east and walked towards a stand of bare, gnarled trees, one of which held the cache. Yellow rumped warblers were too numerous to count, twittering in and out and all around the fields and trees. A few American Robins were spotted here and there. A hawk flew above us, either a red-tailed or a red-shouldered. The vultures were ever present to the east, just above the water that grew from a trickle where we stood to a little gully several feet across in the distance. If I was an artist, I would draw for you the sight I saw from my binoculars as I looked that way – the sight of three incongruous birds perched in a vertical line in the bare branches of the tallest tree; the lowest a blue heron with delicate neck in a s-shaped curve, the middle a white ibis with long curved bill, and the top unidentified, with the bill of an ibis but dark brown feathers. I wished I could see that mystery bird better, but we were also in a mission to keep going, find what we were looking for, not fall down, and get home in a reasonable time frame.

As we made our way east, we heard one, then another crack of a rifle to the north. We aren’t sure what was being hunted. We did see signs that, at night probably, the wild things were doing hunting of their own. I am fairly certain that in these collection of tracks below, besides the obvious raccoon, that a large cat was spending some time out here, perhaps bobcat. Also, a few piles of coyote scat were seen, as well as damage to the side of the reservoir from feral hogs

On the way home, we stopped to take a picture of a red-shouldered hawk perched all dejected-looking in a tree. I will have to post those shots once J gets them off his camera (all shots in here are from my phone). Also, I had him get a shot of a striking Northern Cardinal singing to the day at the top of a bare tree.

Later, we ended up in Cullinan Park on the south side of town. We were with kids and parents, armed with sets of binoculars and a birding book to see what was going on at Pumpkin Lake. We saw American Coots and Common Moorhen, with Great Egrets congregating at the back of the lake. More yellow rumped warblers flitting in the bushes, along with what appeared to be Song and Savannah Sparrows. There were probably a great many others, but identification is still difficult for me. We walked along the trails and found a cache, and talked about others that used to be here (that I never found, only J) and what the trails used to be like. Apparently this bridge used to go all the way across, but now stems the tide of trash down in the large creek:

Also this week, I have been spending quite a bit of time along the Willow Fork Trail Bayou Extension (?) that runs under 99 and to the west along the bayou just south of Westheimer Parkway near my house. I’ve been strengthening these muscles there, too, combining dog walking with geocaching and looking for birds.

One day, in the golden hour of light just before dusk begins, I had a rare moment where the multi-users of this trail had disappeared, and the birds felt comfortable enough to peek out and peep down the trail. A Downy Woodpecker flew past the Song Sparrows that were cheeping along looking for insects. Several Blue Jays were seen, one carrying what appeared to be a big muffin in his beak. Several birds were heard fluttering around on the forest floor, none of which I was able to get a good lock on.

With these birds, plus the Great Horned Owl sighting of earlier this week, it brings the yearly total of seen species to 37.

Wild Things

Last Friday, three of us were watching “Where the Wild Things Are”: J, myself, and the little one. About halfway through, the little one wondered if we were going to turn it off soon. When I asked why, he answered that it was scaring him. He couldn’t handle the wild rumpus. He asked me if those things were real, and I explained to him that it was just a story that someone invented to help children deal with their fears. “But what if they ARE real, Mom?” he asked me, very concerned.

There’s nothing to be scared of, child. The wild things aren’t real.

Except that they are, sometimes. Just not in the way he thinks.

A few days later, I was walking my dogs out along a nearby bayou. We were walking along the footpath, and I was scouting for birds. Peeps and chips indicated the birds were all around me, but the sun was going down, and I was having a hard time spotting them in the little field binocs I had. The dogs were all excited because they had been flushing small game out of the brush along the way. When I heard the fluttering of brush to my right, at first I thought it was just another rabbit, but then I realized that it was something much larger. Then I heard this peculiar sound, a wuf-wuf, the snuffling of an animal trying to fix a smell in his nostrils to make an identification. Trepidation filled me, and despite my very strong inclination to continue down the trail, I realized that would be a bad idea. It was a wild thing party, and I had brought the predators. I am not sure if the dogs on the other end of my leash were akin to bringing a gun to a knife fight or the other way around, but I didn’t want to find out.

Except that I was on the verge of getting some bird sightings in for the day, and I really wanted to get back on the trail. After walking in the dirt next to the bayou for a while, I noticed some walkers going down the same path, but from the other direction. I was hoping that whatever it was would be scared off by them, or would have moved on by now. I followed them back in, thinking if nothing else, I could judge by their reactions if there was anything to be concerned about. They didn’t react to anything, so I kept going, but when I got to that same spot, there it was again, the snuffling sound. I booked it out of there, with the feeling that a feral hog or coyote was going to come charging out of the woods towards the dogs any minute. Or, just perhaps, one of the Wild Things…

A couple of months ago, the kids and I were driving to a football game, and we spotted the incongruous sight of a coyote booking it across busy 99. A few days after, I saw a dead coyote near the same spot. On the same road but much further south, on my daily commute down past the farms and the prison on the way towards Stafford, dead coyotes leer up at me from the side of the road, frozen in the grim smile of death. I feel for the coyote, whose home range we have slowly been destroying in order to feed the need of expansion.

In Bellaire, the only good coyote is a dead coyote, or at least a relocated one. Residents have been complaining about a pack of them that are living in what little is left of their world – a small tract of land between power lines. Coyotes have to adapt to the urban environment, or die off. Nobody wants a wild thing eating their house cats and small fluffy dogs.

In the darkness of a suburban night, the little one and I are out at a school track doing some exercise when a large bird begins a slow descent above us. We could almost feel the wind from his wings. I got excited for a second, thinking I was witnessing a rare predator bird, but then I realized from the light blue under wings and the way he glided into the creek nearby that it was just the Great Blue Heron that lives over there. “Was that a monster, mommy?” “No, my son, it was just a bird.” “But what if it was a bird who was really a monster? Is there such a thing?” No. “But what if there was?”

It’s nothing to be scared of, my child. Monsters aren’t real.

But big birds are. Last night, when the husband came home, he was preoccupied. He was looking for his binoculars, and for the super flashlight. There was an owl outside, and he wanted to get a look. We were all ready to celebrate his birthday, but instead he said, come look. I peeked through the scope to see a large dark body on the power line, eyes glowing in the night. Then he cast the light of 250 lumens on it, and it lit up like broad daylight – and I was looking at the dark brown and golden feathers of the Great Horned Owl, who turned to look at us but didn’t fly away. I asked J how he knew he was there, and he said he heard him. This morning, as I got in my car, I heard him again, and it made me smile, and it made me think about that movie again, that movie in which monsters are teaching a kid about what it means to be a human, and he teaches them about what it means to be a wild thing, and I thought about my little son.

Yes, my child, the wild things are real. They are all around us, and all you have to do is look, and listen, but don’t be scared. This world, after all, belongs to them.

Fulshear Afternoon

We went out west this afternoon.

It’s been a long time coming, this latest trip to Fulshear. We hid some geocaches out there in 2012, and a few of them haven’t been found in a while. One of the things on my list that I wanted to do when I recovered from my leg injury was this very trip: cache maintenance, exploration, and a little cache finding.

The kids didn’t want to leave the house but we didn’t care. I did try to sweeten the trip with a stop at Essence House II for cookies and drinks before we started our journey in earnest, though. Once they got outside, they had a good time. The following are their portraits of outdoor play near the Brazos River bank:

This area is one of TPWD’s canoe launch sites they built in late 2011. I have yet to see the canoe launches they built out here show up on an actual paddling trail listing on the TPWD website, but this place does seem to be popular with people wanting to fish, play in the river, and shoot guns. The boys almost always find 12 gauge shotgun shells down here when we go.

In the top picture, the fishermen on top of the bridge support had just walked up there – that was not possible last time we were down here. The waters have receded a lot. You can see the pile of branches on the supports showing the level the water had been at before. We have been to this canoe launch quite a few times, although never to actually launch a canoe. There are a lot of trails that go on past where we have our cache hidden. Someday, we might hide more. I let the boys explore a little within eyesight of me, but the inclines on the trails were too great for me to follow them right now, being just a week and a half post leg surgery. I still have stitches in my leg and barely can handle any distance or terrain changes for the moment.

After this, we headed to the other canoe launch out here, about 3.4 miles away. For people who don’t canoe, we sure seem to spend a lot of time at the launches. We were here to check on another cache, named for a Sasquatch story a cop told us out here. It is also the site where a cross marker lay in remembrance of two people who were murdered near here and whose bodies were found in the river.

Today, there was another body out here, although we are fairly certain from the shape it was animal in origin, and not a human. We noticed it when we parked, a brown roundish lump laying on the ground in between the parking spot and the cache site, not 20 feet from the cross. We thought it was a dead deer, but when we got closer, we realized the brown color came from the blanket that was thrown over it. There were maggots crawling on the blanket, and when my oldest son (foolishly) threw a small rock at the decomposing body, you could see the ripples underneath of what certainly was a huge colony of maggots making work of this carcass. It started to smell and we were disgusted and walked away, none of us having the guts to lift the blanket and see what was underneath. From the body shape, we suspect it was a large dog, or perhaps a pig or other small livestock. This picture of the kids sitting on the culvert just to the right of this disturbing find.

Ew. After this, we were going to head for a small series of caches we have hidden on a country road about 6 miles east, but we decided to take a scenic backroad diversion to get there and then ran out of time. Instead, we found a shady country road that might be ripe for a new cache series (although the nearby residents that we saw outside their homes were causing us to question this choice – it seemed like sort of a rough area – it had a “Deliverance” meets South Africa kind of feel to it, with unfriendly eyes and condemned shacks – which was a surprise because the road backed up to a very nice high end neighborhood).

So we drove back up to the main road (1093) and then entered the neighborhood of Fulbrook and found a couple of caches there. Here is my log entry for one I particularly enjoyed:

JustKeely found Rocky Trail

I really enjoyed this cache, it was everything I like about caching. It was a short, scenic walk from parking, and we saw a blue heron and a great white egret in the pond. While signing the cache log, we saw some striking red, purple, and white flowers, as well as an interesting looking beetle. We saw a spider web with a small black spider with a white back on the walk back, and then we heard some bird just going at it, so we looked around to identify them. The smallest of our boys said it was probably a boy and girl boy talking to each other, and even though he got in trouble for talking so loudly and potentially scaring them off, he did appear to be right. Team Four Paw was also right when he speculated about it being woodpeckers. Two red bellied woodpeckers were getting into it, chasing each other around and tweeting. Well, on second thought, maybe it was two males and not a male and female – maybe they were fighting over territory or something. It was neat to see though. Thanks for the fun little outdoors experience for the day.

These are some of the flowers I saw. Took me a while to identify these flowers because I am not that good at it, but I finally found it: Turks cap, or Malvaviscus drummondii. Here is another shot of them up against a tree.

Too bad I didn’t get a picture of the woodpeckers. I did get one of the beetle we saw, but it is not in focus. The spider web would have been cool, but was too hard to try to capture with my cell phone camera.

I think the boys had fun, even though they were quite happy to be headed home after this. I feel good about finally maintaining my caches, and about getting out of the house. Hopefully, after I get my stitches out, my leg will actually heal up with no more problems and I can start hiking again.

Puerto Rico Adventures #2

So, we’ve been back from Puerto Rico for a month, and I have been a slacker about relaying our adventures, sorry about that. I’ve been occupying my time writing my children long letters because I miss them this summer. They are a little more than halfway through their visit to their father’s house. We’ve been going to the gym a lot, and hanging out doing other things besides computer activities.

I did want to share our experiences, though, in case other people were curious. Our trip to El Yunque Natonal Forest was a sojourn into the true wilderness of Puerto Rico. This US National Park Service property spreads across 28,000 acres, and is the only tropical rainforest in the US National Forest system.

Our visit there was somewhat marred by the fact that it was raining all day, but we were determined not to let it interfere with our enjoyment. If one finds themselves in El Yunque National Forest, a stop to the El Portal Rain Forest Center is essential. The walkway is 60 feet above the ground, taking the visitors on a walk through the treetops. It gave a unique perspective on the canopy. We engaged in a long conversation with a dedicated employee who supplied us with a map and explained to us key features of the road and trails. We shopped in the gift shop, because I wanted to get something for the kids there. There were several educational areas along the walkway, but we were now in a hurry to take in as much as we could before the rain stopped us.

We stopped at the Yokahu tower and climbed to the top to get an aerial view of the area. This is where the top picture came from. We then went to hike along the La Mina Trail (below picture). Since it was raining so hard, and also there was a promise we might be able to get into the water at the La Mina Falls, I changed into my swim suit for the hike. When we got to the falls, about 0.8 miles down the trail, it was raining way too hard and causing the falls to be too intense and dangerous to get into. Normally, the water cascades gently into the natural pool that visitors like to wade in, but there was no one in the water today.

The trail we took went down hill along limestone steps and walkways, which was great fun on the way down. Although I was concentrating on not slipping and falling, I was completely thrilled with the walk. I was very happy to be hiking here this day. The way back was a little bit more difficult, because we had to now go up that hill we just went down. It took us about an hour or so to get there and back. We could hear the coqui frogs singing in the forest but we never saw any. We actually didn’t see any wildlife at all – they were probably all being smart and hiding from the rain.

When we got back to the car, J was done with the whole hiking thing, but I wanted to grab one more geocache so I went just a short way down the Bano de Oro trail by myself. It was very nice, but then I was also ready to go. We drove up to the end of the road, thinking we might hike up to the Mt Britton Tower, but then we decided not to, and elected to drive back and hit up the Loquillo food kiosks for the second time that day.

I would love to go back again someday and finish walking all the trails. This place had a lot to offer and is a beautiful jewel of a forest.