A Walk in the Park

Just on the outskirts of our neighborhood, there is a nice little park that is mostly hidden from view. It's an interesting location: it borders a branch of a river, an undeveloped wooded area, the intersection of two major freeways, and--just on the other side of a hill--the high school belonging to our neighborhood. Soon a mall, which is in the early stages of development, will be located across from the high school.

The park has been there less than a year, and it's not quite finished. James and I have frequently been going there to walk around the half-mile concrete trail loop. Yesterday, we walked ten laps (five miles), and I hope the weather allows us to continue to walk that far more often. If you can ignore the occasional unpleasant occurrences (a whiff of the polluted water, a helicopter flying overhead, the noisy traffic, and that cyclist whirring by who didn't have the common courtesy to yell 'on your left!'), the park is very peaceful and relaxing. It's hard to see much nature in the city, and though this park has but just a tiny amount, it's as good as it gets for a daily walk. I have even seen mice and armadillos on more than one occasion.

On our walk yesterday, I saw two interesting things. First, James and I noticed a man collecting sticks from the woods. He was alone, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and rollerblades. I did wonder what he was doing, but I also thought that he might be an eccentric stick-collector. I mean, what good reason could a person have for doing that?

On our second lap past this man, James pointed out that there were a bunch of sticks that had been stuck in the ground along the area where the man had been on the previous lap and leading up to where he was now standing, sticking more sticks in the grass. I started looking at where he had placed the sticks, and I noticed that they were all marking the same type of small plant. I didn't recognize what type it was, but it seemed he had marked every place where one of these plants was located. I was very curious.

As we approached where the man was standing, he said 'hi.' He looked nice, so I asked him what were the plants that he was marking. He explained that they were bluebonnets (aha!) and that he was afraid that the city would mow over them before they could bloom, which would cause them not to reseed and reappear next year. He iterated that is is illegal to mow or pick bluebonnets (which I--and all Texans-- know), but he was concerned the city mowers wouldn't pay attention. Frankly, I wouldn't have paid attention either because I didn't recognize these tiny plants as bluebonnets. My logic tells me that it is probably only illegal when the flowers are budding/blooming (which these weren't), but I really thought it was a nice thing for him to do. I thanked him before we continued on our way.

We also saw three people with a small remote-controlled helicopter sitting at a picnic table. Each time we were approaching them, I would hope that they would have the helicopter in the air, but I was disappointed each time. Finally, just as we passed them on our last lap, the helicopter zoomed up into the air, and James and I watched it fly around for a while. It was the one time I was not sorry to see a helicopter flying overhead at the park.