What used to be beautiful, uninterrupted backwoods now has a modern trail running through it. A dad with his two kids told me this afternoon that they will soon put in a huge elevated bridge across the creek. I’ll have to find a way to get down past it, even if I have to hang a climbing rope ladder on it.

I don’t want to traverse. I want to immerse. Convenient rarely equals joyful on a long timeline. If it were true, all of our fast vehicles and massive roads would have led us to be happier.

What used to be a massive cattail marsh is now just a small patch. I remembered last year after most of the hummingbirds migrated that it was one of the last places to be abandoned by these little jet fighters. I wasn’t disappointed this afternoon. There was a small squadron of the hummingbirds there, joyfully feeding on the little red wildflowers growing around the cattails.

As for birds, my Merlin app confirmed what my eyes were seeing. It tracked 36 different kinds of birds. I’m certain some of them were migratory, unlike me, who will return more frequently now that it’s rained and the weather is cooling.

When I arrived at the creek, an older man stood on the low water dam looking down at a turtle with a little bit of damage on its back. He told me his dogs had gotten a hold of it and that he feared it wasn’t alive. He left before he found out otherwise. The turtle came out of its shell and then I had to rescue it from one of the flow drainage pipes running under the low water dam.

The dad I mentioned earlier in the post took the opportunity to talk to his two kids about turtles and nature. I waded up into the creek away from them. The little boy was jealous that I was allowed to roll up my pants and walk barefoot in the middle of the creek. I heard the dad tell him that the next time they came, they would all go into the creek without shoes.

I never see people my age roll up their pants and get in the water. It’s their loss. Sure, I can slip and fall in. It’s happened before. And I hope it happens again. Everything comes with a price and a risk. Just as much as the decision to play it safe.

Some bastard with chalk defiled an offshoot of the trail. It’s so strange that he used red for the hat and orange for the stick body. Who in the hell carries chalk out across a creek? Crazy people, that’s who.