State of Wilderness

SMTX: Ringtail Ridge Natural Area

There is something exciting about following a path, not knowing where it leads you to. Sometimes, you find something interesting along the way, something that sparks your curiosity and imagination, something that connects you to the past but then also makes you wonder about the future. This is how we felt about the unexpected encounter with this tipi.

However, if you had been Todd (my best friend’s husband), you might have been prepared for this sight, because you would have looked at the trail map ahead of time and seen the tipi marked on there. I wasn’t doing such things, but instead had, of course, loaded up a geocache on my phone for us to find. And no one was surprised about that part. There is something comforting about hanging out with people who really know you, know all the things that motivate you.

It was Todd’s idea that we check this place out after dinner, because he knew that exploring a natural area is something that our family (or at least the two parents) would be completely interested in. Our littlest one had some fun finding sticks, of course – this is what he is completely interested in.

It was a neat place to check out, although I was starting to suspect by the end that it might have been a better idea not to go right after dinner, or on a day when we had two meals so close together. We had a late lunch in Luling at the best BBQ in town (City Market), then had chased that with a pizza dinner at a place in San Marcos with really neat pizza (Pie Society). We kind of lost some impetus at the end because I wasn’t feeling great, and we had allowed the toddler to be loose and explore, and he kept stopping to look at every rock and crevice. We were much faster when Jason carried him on his shoulders (we had not packed our Osprey for this journey).

It is nice, though, that San Marcos has these kinds of natural places to go explore. The city does a good job, from what we have seen, of allowing pockets of wilderness to exist within the city. We were surrounded by apartments, but on the trail, you could easily pretend they didn’t exist and just focus on the shrubs, cedar, and stones around you. This kind of focus allows your mind to wander into a more primitive place, a place I like to go because there, I can leave all the other things behind. In this place, there is nothing but being aware and present, and taking the trail one step at a time.

Spring Creek Reflections

Last night I took a walk with a friend in Pundt Park. We experienced some of the trails, and then ended up over by the canoe launch. We decided to walk down to check it out. When we came down the sandy embankment and found ourselves face to face with Spring Creek, I was filled with this childlike desire to go play in the water. I told my friend, and she was feeling the same way.

We took off our shoes. I rolled up the legs of my jeans and walked slowly in. Looking around the creek, standing there with my feet in the water, brought back so many memories of my youth. There was a time where the best friend of my youth and I spent hours exploring and swimming in Cypress Creek. We made up little stories about who we might have been in a previous existence, or what life would be like if this wildness is all we knew.

This night as we walked, the best friend of my adulthood asked me if I ever looked at the landscape and imagined what it would like to be experiencing it as a native american. I do that often, particularly on long hikes or long drives where my mind begins to wander.

These thoughts led me to reflect on why wildness resonates with us. Sometimes it is because the history of our species, some innate ongoing connection to the land through ancestral memory. Sometimes our connection is born through a personal memory that means a lot to us, like the one of my friend and I playing in the creek. Because of that, I am more interested in seeing these greenways between Cypress and Spring Creeks play out, because others might also build their own meaningful connections with this area.

Many times, for me, the wild areas remind me of Scout Camp, which was a place I felt happy. My sense of discovery and excitement over learning about nature was probably born in that place. When I am walking in a forest, I remember Scout Camp and this memory is connected to the bliss I feel in the present.

How will the children of this current generation learn to value the wilderness? I imagine my children’s reality is similar to most of their time, where video games have replaced going outside, and kids know more about Minecraft building than fort building. There is a book, Last Child in the Woods, that explores that theme more thoroughly. I do think outdoor education and experiences are important for children to build that connection, and I try to give that to my kids, but my older children sometimes make me feel like I am torturing them with it. Also, I am one person, one person who cares very deeply for the wilderness and actually spends quite a bit of time there. What about most families? Are they providing their children with meaningful outdoor experiences? Will children of this Generation Z or iGeneration have enough of those experiences to feel willing to protect it?

When I start going down these mental roads, I feel comforted by a couple of things. One, you do see families out at these places enjoying them, and with the investment of communities into places like these, there will be more access to those experiences. Two, despite my children whining about having to go hiking and camping, they have picked up on a skill set along the way. My teenager is almost at the point where I feel like he might be able to survive a weekend camping trip with a peer. Finally, outdoor camps and recreation areas are still getting booked up in the summer, so interest in these areas is not dying off.

This night, we witnessed a family at the creek bank getting maternity pictures taken of the mom. We saw a man playing with his dogs, who were swimming in the creek water. We observed a girl sitting alone on the bank, pensively reflecting on her own thoughts before disappearing around the bend. We saw many people playing with their dogs in the dog park and walking along the road or greenway. This park is full of people like us, creating memories on a warm summer night.

Solitude in Cross Creek Ranch

A rare thing happened last week. My two year old came home from daycare and went to sleep. Suddenly, we had spare time. I offered my husband first rights of refusal, but he wanted to stay home. Not me.

I left and headed out to my favorite place, the wetlands at Cross Creek Ranch. I out some headphones on to listen to some new music I had downloaded (Missy Higgins, after my friend Mel recommended her to me). On the way there, I felt the absence of a friend. I thought in my head about what it would be like to be pointing out all the reasons why I loved this place to someone.

It has been so long since I have had some time to just chill out with a girlfriend, to paint our nails and listen to each other’s music, tell each other about our books, show each other our neighborhoods. Perhaps this is just a function of age, of distance, of stages in our lives. The friends I do have, we live across town from each other, and our conversations are always punctuated by side conversations with kids. We only have time to talk to each other after work, before bed, or in between kids activities and dinner times. It is not that often, and I feel like I just can’t get enough.

When I got to the wetlands, I was walking through the grass on the backside of the ponds looking for a rare red-vented bulbul (bird). I was listening to my music at first, but then I realized that I was missing half of the outdoor program by having my ears plugged. When I took out the headphones, I heard the raucous calls of the grackals and the coos of the doves. I smelled something wild, something mammalian, and I made up some creatures that it could have been until I realized it was actually just the smell of cattle beyond the fence line. I found a bleached out turtle shell, feeling the thrill of discovery and a childish desire to pick it up and keep it as a treasure. I wandered further down a wild path than I intended to, trying to figure out what bird was making a loud alarm call (a green heron chick). I spotted one of these chicks on a soft place beyond some reeds, all plump and feathery, walking swiftly on stubbly legs towards the safety of the water as I walked past.

I stood for a bit on on of the boardwalks, watching the water move towards me in gentle waves. I wanted to put my hands on the railing, but when I looked down at it, I realized it was covered in white heron poop. In fact, the whole boardwalk looked white-washed in it. I kind of laughed at the absurdity, that these birds have claimed this place from us so thoroughly. Again, I felt the pain of being alone, a wish that I had a friend who lived near me that I could share this laugh with.

If I had a friend with me, though, we would have been talking to each other, and I would have missed all of those smells, sounds, sightings, thrills and discoveries – all of those things that were so stress-relieving about this walk. It is the full immersion with nature, a full disconnection with the exterior world of work and household chores and worrying about other people that makes this type of thing so rewarding for me.

It still would be nice to have a friend who lives close to me, though, to be able to call when I had a spontaneous hour alone, someone to join me in trying out that cool little coffee shop, farmers market, wine store, free yoga class – whatever. I was hoping to meet someone like that in Hike it Baby, and although I did make one good friend sort of kind of through that, she still lives kind of far for spontaneous adventures. I hope that I will meet someone in these new groups I have joined who can be my new neighborhood friend, but I am still in those early stages so I am not sure yet.

Later, over the weekend, I got the opportunity to spend some time with some friends, some old and some new. I met some really awesome ladies and got to know some others better, spent time with a friend out at a park with our babies, and some time laying on another friend’s couch with my little one asleep in my arms. I realized that missing a friend doesn’t mean that I don’t have friends in my life, but it is maybe just that I am missing a stage of having friends that is probably a thing of the past. Maybe friendship just looks different in your forties. Perhaps at this age, we can have friends on deeper levels – friends to learn from, engage in activities with, commiserate about motherhood with, experience new things with, march and resist with, and that’s okay.

McKinney Falls State Park, Last Month

Last month, we explored a state park we hadn’t been to yet, as part of my ambitious camping plan I planned out last fall. The older boys opted to spend the weekend at Grandma’s house. Somehow this was preferable to spending the weekend in close quarters with us, which might be a sign that we have been camping too much as a family lately. It was nice to not have to worry about two additional sets of needs, though, as we had the dogs with us and a two year old is enough to worry about.

I do think we will need to come back sometime with the older ones, though. There were rocks to jump off of and swimming holes and all kinds of fun for able bodied strong swimmers. It was not the greatest place to camp with a two year old, though. He enjoyed the water, but we were stressing about his safety around it.

The rocky areas were hard for me to walk in, given my ankle injury from years back. I think Breeze liked it, but Scout was hating every minute. She loves the water, but him not so much (one is a retriever and one is a herder – makes sense, right?) Scout is just too old and feeble now to go camping, so this will probably go down as his last big hurrah.

It was Easter weekend, which I don’t think I realized when I booked it, and then I felt bad about depriving Sebastian of Easter egg hunting experiences, so we left the park on Saturday morning and drove fifteen minutes away to a rec center in south Austin to participate in an Easter festival. What we learned this day: he doesn’t like cotton candy, he is very interested in hula hoops and ping pong games, Easter egg hunts aren’t really that much fun anymore because of the chaos that ensues, and he is scared of generally all characters dressed in full suit costumes (no Easter Bunny pictures for this guy). On one of the evenings we were there, we left the park again to go eat some Mexican food and then watch planes arrive and take off from the Austin airport at the family viewing area. Good times.

On the in-betweens, when Sebastian wasn’t napping, we went for short hikes to explore the park. We would have taken longer ones, but poor Scout just couldn’t hang. We saw a big group heading out to do a Yoga Hike, which kind of sounded fun to me, but maybe later on in my life (probably something I should have done earlier in my life). We saw flowers and water and rock formations, and did not really find any birds or geocaches this time around. Perhaps we are changing our focus. Overall, it was a pretty park and a good time to visit, but probably won’t be one we spend lots of time at, although I do want to let the older boys see what it like to jump off the rock formations into the water like we saw others doing. Perhaps we will do this on a day trip or a stop on the way somewhere else.

Here are some scenes from the park: