The garden now.

A day at the Fort Worth Nature Center

We spent much of today at the Fort Worth Nature Center. In fact, we have gone there about this time every year for several years now, and it's because of the Dallas-Fort Worth Herpetological Society having their annual "Snakes of Tarrant County" exhibit. The exhibit is a rare opportunity for me, since I like to learn about and observe snakes, but only in the presence of experts. (I'm not an amateur snake-handler.) The kids loved it, and the society has done a good job at making it kid friendly, as you might expect. I guess there is a single primary family that is responsible for the exhibit, and their older children are there to help. They were friendly to our kids, and seemed to understand small children, even when Neil was being difficult. In any case, we visited the snake exhibit first, and I realized then that I wanted to go hiking just as much, maybe because of the overcast and warm weather. There are extensive hiking trails there, of great variety. Some are rocky and hilly. Some are flat and smooth. There is a variety of scenery, from dense woods, to plains with bison and prairie dogs in view. What do I know? I've only hiked on two of the trails, actually. But after today, I want more. Hiking is one of my favorite pastimes. Actually, I like taking walks, so as I see it, I like hiking a fortiori. Hiking with small children can be a bad idea, so I thought we'd get our feet wet with what I thought was a small and easy trail adjacent to the visitor's center. I didn't have a map, and we got off course of that easy trail and onto a rocky and hilly trail, in dense woods. Neil liked it. He curiously wonders if snakes are in the tall grass, as we warned him there were a few weeks ago at Fort Griffin. He notices the rocks (and boulders), and the fire ant "mountains," and the various bugs. Olivia, on the other hand, thought the trail was "dangerous." She refused to enjoy anything she normally would, such as seeing a butterfly. As if her mood wasn't plain enough, I asked her, "Is hiking awesome?" She replied, "No, hiking is not awesome." I don't know if she just didn't want to be hiking, or if she was actually nervous about the difficulty of the trail, the dense woods (which can make a person feel lost and disoriented), the tall grass, etc. We eventually came to one of the park's roads and just decided to try to find our way back to the visitor's center to get a map of the trails, rather than continue hiking further away from it. Once back there, I noticed a trail that we had seen a little of last year, with the kids (and they enjoyed it). I remembered this trail, that it has wide, flat and soft dirt paths, bison and prairie dogs are in view, has an open view of the land, and it is a popular trial. I thought if we had a chance to enjoy hiking, this would be the trail. So we drove to it, and parked. The kids did like it (even Olivia), and we went much further down the trail than last year. Maybe a little too far, since we each had to carry one of the kids for part of the way back. Sometimes, we all enjoy the same things about hiking (or going to the zoo, or botanic gardens), such as seeing a bison, or flower, or bug. Sometimes we don't see it the same way that the kids do. For the first ten minutes on the trail, all the kids wanted to do was play in the dirt and pretend their toy snakes were eating the dirt. At that time,they were enjoying the trail as much as we, just for different reasons. Eventually, I had enough, and thought I wasn't going to stand around while they played in the dirt. I had to think of a diversion. I said, "Why don't we go find some berries for the snakes to eat?" (Just one day earlier, we had found some wild berries growing at the botanic gardens, which they were intrigued about.) It worked they were ready to explore the trail and find berries. We never found them, but we were just there for the pursuit, anyway.