State of Wilderness

Buescher State Park: Patterns of Place and People

It was the first Saturday morning of the year, and I was sitting on a small mound of dirt, just to the right of a tree root. I was watching the water slowly lap at the edge of the lake, and contemplating what it really meant to know a place. I wondered if the park rangers or perhaps regulars to the campgrounds get to know the patterns of place so well that they can recognize subtle changes. We explorers thrill on the novelty of finding new places, buzzing about like bees, taking the best parts of places and spreading it around to our friends. There are those who get to know a place intimately, though, and through repetitive experiences, like long term live in relationships, they get to know the nuances of a place, which may in some degrees be sweeter and more meaningful than only catching the highlights.

This morning, I had gotten a little taste of the patterns of this place just sitting and watching for an hour or two before anyone else woke up. I arose when I first started hearing the soft little whistles of the cardinals. The cardinals are the ones who usually first greet the day in the state parks in our area of the world, the first ones most campers hear.

On the way to the restrooms, I noticed a flock of Cedar Waxwings, my first of the season, taking over an entire tree. I heard some loud wuk calls that I later determined to be coming from about four or five Pileated Woodpeckers who flew from tree to tree along this edge of the lake, then sometimes crossing the lake and flying from tree to tree over there. Oddly, the bird checklist for this area lists this species as “uncommon”, with an asterik noting “nesting”, but I wonder if the recent fire in the area has impacted their range. They prefer dead, dying, and downed trees, and there are plenty more in this park now than previously. The damage from Hidden Pines fire of a couple of months ago has closed most of the trails in this park, and they are not expected to reopen for another several months.

I made a morning coffee and sat at the picnic bench with my binoculars. Crows competed with the woodpeckers in a cry-off contest, making so much noise that I wondered how the others were sleeping through it. Then the warblers showed up, with their little tweets and feeding frenzy: Yellow Rumped, Pine, what I think was a Northern Parula although the list doesn’t show them as winter birds here. A couple of different woodpeckers showed up: the Red Bellied and Ladder Backed. Then after that, nonbreeding plumage American Goldfinches came, feasting on little thistles, and then the area was completely taken over by the Cedar Waxwings. Once the waxwings left, chickadees and kinglets came in. It was like as if somewhere out of sight an usher pointed to each group like tables at a banquet, gesturing that it was their turn to step up to the buffet. I wondered how they established which groups came at each time: if it related to light, timing, temperature, etc. The next morning, I expected to see the same pattern, but didn’t. I didn’t even see the same kinds of birds the next morning, seeing instead hawks, herons, sparrows, a Northern Flicker, Eastern Pheobes, and Tufted Titmouse.

This time to contemplate and record observations would probably not have been possible if I had my baby with me. Jason ended up having to stay back with the baby and the dogs for this camping trip due to one of the dogs having gotten injured at the last minute before leaving Friday morning, too late to back out of the reservation. It would have been pretty cold to have been camping with a baby in these screened shelters we reserved, with little insulation from the heat. These are pictures of the one we stayed in:

Next time we come to this park to camp as a family, especially in winter, I think we will reserve either one of the the premium shelters or one of the mini-cabins. The mini-cabins are heated and have bunk beds, as well as little porches that look out over the lake. They are $75 a night, compared to $45 for the premium and $25 for the regular screened shelters. Below is a picture of premium shelter #1, which would be the best one to rent:

Despite most of the trails in this park being closed, we still found plenty to do, even though we didn’t do it all. Someday I want to come back here and go canoeing in the lake. We found some geocaches along the Winding Woodland Trail in the park until we reached the closed section. The girls hiked in Bastrop SP, and the first day of the New Year, so did my oldest son and I. The boys tried their hand at fishing and just ended up cold and frustrated with it, but I think they had fun anyways. We had two good fires both nights, the second night being the most surprising since it rained pretty good for about two hours before we got our fire going. My son impressed me with his fire skills, as well as his storytelling abilities. I am so proud of the young man he has turned into, and I love it that we had this experience where I got to see this side of him. All in all, we had a great camping trip, despite the weather.

We’ll be back sometime soon, Buescher, we’re not through with you yet.

2015: To Sum, and What’s to Come

Last Christmas, my mom gave me this journal in the above photo, and it turned out to be my favorite item of the entire year. I carried that with me during all my outdoor adventures and checked off all the birds I saw during the year on the master list in the back, as well as taking notes month to month. Comparing that list to last year’s, I see that I observed roughly the same amount of species this year as I did the year before: 132 in 2015, 134 in 2014. This is intriguing to me because we did a lot less traveling this year than the previous year, but I also had gotten a lot better at identifying birds in my own area. My mind is just still preoccupied with this subject.

There are a lot of blank pages still left in this journal, and hopefully I will be filling some more up this year. My goal for 2016 is to find over two hundred, and plan some trips specifically for the purpose of birding. However, even if we don’t travel much beyond Houston, there is so much to see within just a two hour radius of our town that I think I could still find that many. I feel like I am already off to a good start on this goal, having identified 22 species over the past couple of days that I spent camping at Buescher State Park.

In this past year, the National Park’s “Every Kid in a Park” campaign resulted in all fourth graders in America being granted an annual parks pass that is good until August 2016. We printed ours out (since we have a fourth grader this year) and would love to be able to utilize it this year to experience some more parks. However, the cost of raising a baby has been eating into our travel funds, so it remains to be seen whether a big road trip will be in our budget this year. I am hoping we can at least get to Big Bend or Fort Davis this year, or perhaps to Oklahoma or North Carolina to visit family, but we’ll have to see how things unfold.

My best friend Jen, who I just went camping with over the past two days, has an idea that she wants to go camping or at least hiking together like once a month over the next year, so that will provide some impetus for outdoor exploring, as well as my continued interest in being involved with Hike It Baby. Jen and I both have this dream that we will be backpackers and complete a thru hike one day, so we want to increase our hiking stamina and try an overnight hike this year to see how we like it. I also basically want to increase my physical fitness and overall health this year.

Another goal I have for 2016 is finally getting to 4000 geocache finds. I’ve been saying this for a couple of years now, but I am very close (162 finds away) now. However, we have really slowed down on geocaching. I used to average about 500 finds a year, and last year I only found 171. We did find three this weekend, and they were the kind I like (ammo cans in the woods) and so that did make me feel excited about finding more. I have gotten burned out on urban hides, especially some in my area, and that kind of killed the urge for me. If we are camping, hiking, and exploring parks, though, then I hope to combine geocaching with all that.

This year, Sebastian is going to learn how to swim (as much as a baby can learn), and Kaleb thinks he wants to try new sports, so there are some new frontiers there worth exploring as well. Now that Sebastian is a little more mobile, I am looking forward to discovering new parks with him, the way I used to with my older boys. We already discovered that a new one by our house is much more interesting than I anticipated, and I am excited by the idea of hosting his birthday party there. If there are Hike It Baby hikes scheduled on the weekends in new parks, that will be even more reason to explore a new park. Besides parks, there are other indoor areas around town that I haven’t shown my kids, or perhaps just not in such a long time that they might have forgotten them, so some exploring of Houston landmarks in general is still on our radar.

Basically, we’re not going to stop discovering the world in 2016, so stay tuned for more adventures!

W.G. Jones: Sweetleaf Nature Trail

We’ve had quite a few walks in the woods this year, but all seemed to have a sub-text to them. We’re walking in the woods with a group from Hike It Baby, or like the weekend before, with a Meet Up group composed of people with similar interests. We were there to walk, but also to make or deepen existing friendships. Walking was something we did as we talked. I had this idea that perhaps I wanted to get back to the roots of what drew me to the woods: a time of introspection, a time for mutual wonder, a time for quietness and reconnecting with the physical world around us, the spiritual world within us, and the emotional world between us.

So it was that my husband and I found ourselves alone with the baby on this fall day in the woods to do exactly that. We had left the older boys with grandparents to go shopping, and we were escaping. However, there were qualities about the morning that were less than ideal. The weather had been nice all week and now had turned overcast and threatened to rain. So also had our emotions, and truthfully we had gotten on each other’s nerves so much that by the time we got to the hiking location, I wasn’t really sure I was in the mood to go hiking with him (and it was probably mutual).

I had decided that we had spent enough time exploring W.G. Jones State Forest on the south side of 1488, and that I wanted to explore the north side, the side that claims the Sweetleaf Nature Trail. Here are some tips about this trail that we learned the hard way: 1) it is not really stroller friendly, so if you are bringing a baby, you best bring that baby in a carrier and 2) you really need to call the office and make reservations to park in the area, and make sure you have the combination for the lock for the gate that allows access to this area. It is probably best to call in advance of the weekend, since the office that would give you the combination is not open on the weekends. We found this out the hard way, and if we didn’t have a vehicle with four wheel drive (and a man who knows how to use it creatively), we would probably still be there. No, not really, we probably would have called a friend to come pick us up and recover the vehicle later, but it was a close call. I really had no idea when we followed a troop of cub scouts into the parking area that they were going to lock us in when they left.

In a way, I wished the cub scouts had never been there, but their leaders probably planned this in advance and had called to make the proper arrangements, unlike us. If the Scouts hadn’t opened the gate, though, we would have parked on the south side and walked over, creating a much longer but in some ways safer walk. At any rate, there had been two troops of them, plus leaders and various cling-ons, so whole hordes of slow-moving and loud-talking people were on the trail with us. It wasn’t the best way to enjoy peace in the forest, although some of the children made me smile in their cuteness. At one point, we had to hold off on crossing that suspension bridge in the pictures because the scouts were crossing it instead, so we pulled off to the side of the trail and held this impromptu photo session that resulted in some favorite pictures.

We had two missions for the morning, which kept us engaged in a mutual task. We were looking for geocaches (the initial common interest that drew us together to begin with), and also half-heartedly searching for the endangered red cockaded woodpeckers that are supposed to live in the forest. We didn’t talk much, but had to help each other get the BOB stroller up and down and around various roots and inclines. There was one point when we reached a different section of trail, one composed more of tall pines with wide open trails versus the knobby knees of the cypress down by the creek section, where we spread out from each other a bit more, as we needed each other’s help less. A storm was approaching, and the tops of the pines were swaying in the wind. I felt the excitement in the air, and considered what the woodpeckers did when the rains came, and if they were clinging to the branches or safe in little holes. I thought about my husband, who sometimes in the night seems to me like a solid oak, the kind that stands for years unswerving in face of the storm, and how he had said recently that he felt like this year and all its challenges had brought us closer, and yet sometimes I felt, further apart. Like this day, where I knew as I watched the wind that he was also watching and enjoying the same scene, even though he was a few hundred feet ahead of me, and perhaps he even thought like I did that it brought back memories of some forest we had discovered on one of our road trips.
The rain started right as we reached the car, and the mosquitoes started in just a little before that. We reached safety barely, out of the storm, and back to some level of peace. I appreciated that he was willing to get up early with me and drive an hour and a half to spend the time with me here, and then drive back, stopping to try a fun mid-eastern restaurant on the way home without grumbling, and by the time we were home, we were in a much better mood. And this, my friends, is part of the reason why the forest draws me on the weekends, even when it is hard to get to, even when I don’t always feel like it on the way, even when it is hard; because in the end, the reward always make it worth the struggle. Although, I think I would have been just a teensy bit happier with the trip if we had actually seen one of those elusive little black and white woodpeckers.

Bastrop State Park: Hike It Baby: Thoughts on Hiking

Last weekend, we went camping with the Hike It Baby group at Bastrop State Park. The focused activity of the day was a planned mid-morning hike along the Red Trail (with a later connection to the Purple and Orange Trails, I think). We didn’t get to the park until just before the hike began, due to timing of a work trip I had to take and then subsequent slowness of getting the car packed up. Once there, we decided that Jason would go set up camp for us while the boys and I made the hike.

During the hike, the group of about 22 families split up according to speed. There was a time when we were in the front of the pack, but then I slowed down as I started to pull out the binoculars to look at birds. My oldest son stayed with the front of the group, but the middle one stayed with me for a bit, until I got annoyed with him for throwing a stick into a pile of brush, making a 20151114_104525 crashing sound that chased off the woodpecker I had just asked him if he wanted to look at through the binoculars. After that, he took off to join his brother at the front.
There was a time when another couple or two and the hike leader Jennifer were walking with me, but then they forged on ahead and I kept stopping to look at birds. Pretty soon, I found myself alone on the trail (except for the sleeping baby in the BabyBjorn up against my chest). I knew there were people behind me, but for some reason they didn’t catch up, and I didn’t feel like I needed them to. It seemed like it was about the last half mile I walked alone, because I remember that Jennifer was still at my side when her odometer chimed off the one mile reading.

In that time, I had some time with myself and my thoughts. I considered 20151114_103302 what it would be like to be backpacking alone on a long distance thru hike, and contemplated if I had what it took to do something like that. Mentally, I believe that I have what it would take, because I am enthusiastic and persistent. I am always game for physical activity, and I am absolutely thrilled with being outdoors. The sight of a trail makes my heart pump faster like a person in love.

However, physically, I was feeling the effects of the hike, even though it was fairly short in distance. My lower back was in a lot of pain, and although that probably had to do with the seventeen pounds of baby dead weight on my chest and a possibly ill-fitted baby backpack (we discovered the next weekend that we had failed to adjust it since his last growth spurt). One could argue that I would probably not be carrying a baby on a thru-hike, but I would also be carrying my gear 20151114_102952 on my back instead. Depending on the fit of the pack, that may or may not be easier to handle.

Also, my bum ankle was giving me a hard time. I didn’t really consider when I was laying on my back that fateful day in December 2012 with my bone hanging out and my ankle twisted the wrong way that my hiking aspirations were now toast. I thought with the miracle of modern medicine that I would be as good as new in a few months. I was still in denial until the doctor explained to me that the pain I felt in my ankle would probably always be there, and although I would be able to resume normal activity, it would not be at the level I was at before and I would have to adjust. The cushion between joints at my ankle is gone, and also the strength of my muscles and ligaments has not returned, so after a day of hiking even a short distance, my ankle is swollen under the joint at the inside and I am limping. How could I possibly hike fifteen miles a day or so for months on end, when I am not even sure I can actually hike fifteen miles ONE day?
There was a steep incline on the trail before we got to a stopping point, which was about halfway through the hike that the group had planned. The older boys were up there sitting on a rock waiting for me, complaining that they had enough hiking and could we just call Jason to come get us now? They were bored of it.

I was not bored of it, and I wanted to continue on with the group, but I wanted to wait with the boys to make sure Jason could find them, and by the time this all happened, the group had already started hiking the rest of the way and I was going to have to play catch up. So, I only got to do half the hike, but even though my spirit was willing, the flesh was not, and this makes me reconsider future endeavors.

It might be that backpacking and thru-hikes were always just a pipe dream for me. I have had those before and had to let them go, and it always sucks but after a while, you forget about them. It might be something I can get around to later, after the kids are older and we have more time for our own pursuits. It is not a bad idea to continue to challenge my bum leg and appeal to my outdoor schemes by taking some hikes, perhaps even overnight ones, and see how I feel afterwards.

Still, for now, we are still enjoying the outdoor activities and sense of community offered by Hike It Baby. We enjoyed the rest of the camp out, although for some reason we missed out on some group activities and group knowledge (like when the hot dogs were being served). It might have been because our older kids got bored and we ended up going into town to appease them for a bit (visiting our favorite shop, Bastrop Goldsmith, as well as finding a new favorite shop).
Luckily, another mother in the group offered to make Kaleb a grilled cheese sandwich (since all the hot dogs were gone). The rest of us were fine eating varieties of salad and chili for dinner. Sebastian survived his first camping trip, although he did come down with a mysterious fever in the middle of the night (causing Jason to have to leave camp at one in the morning to find a place open to buy fever reducer at). There is more drama that ensued after (re: car breakdowns and missed work etc), but that is besides the point.
The point is that we did end up having a good time exploring this park with the group, despite physical and logistical challenges. It was so awesome to camp with a group of people who all had young children, because there were many activities to enjoy together. One of the best parts was the hangout site, where there was a sand pit and some safe activities for young ones to explore together. We would camp with this group again, and hopefully I would be able to enjoy an entire hike with them (without complaining older kids, perhaps).