Back To The Forest

I took a little unplanned break. I originally planned to come right back after my buffalo post, but I got kind of distracted with day to day things around here. My house is a little bit run down, and it needed a few repairs. There's still some work to do, but the rest isn't too urgent.

Anyway, I've been saying over and over that I needed to get back out to the forest for quite some time now. Some of you remember that this is what this blog used to be pretty much about. There's just so much to see around here that I keep getting sidetracked.

And then there's the fact that I had to wait for hunting season to end before I went back out. Obviously I didn't think that I would be among the hunted. I'm a human after all, just to confirm it to those of you who might not be sure. Hey, you never know on the faceless internet. I just didn't want there to be any unnecessary accidents, and there were plenty of hunters out there.

So on the first warm day after hunting season had ended, I went out to my favorite nature park around here, Five Ridge Prairie Preserve. The name can fool you, the first section of this park is all forest. It also has another section of woods past the first of a series of giant hills, which also includes a nice little creek running through it.

I stuck to the first section of the park this time, mainly because I never did get the time last winter to keep myself in good enough shape to go several miles into any park. I spent most of the winter sitting in the house or in my truck. I'll have to work my way up to long hikes, which I'll get to eventually.

The good thing is that there's plenty to see here in the first section of the park. That consists mostly of trees and more trees, but that's the way I like it. There are more trees back in Michigan, but I lived in a more urban area, so in my case there really wasn't.

Even in the small nature parks that I visited there, I experienced a peace of mind that is hard for me to fully describe whenever I was in the middle of all those trees. I feel that even more in the huge wild places here like this one. This place is so big that you could get lost without ever being found again. With that in mind, I stick close to the trails.

At the end of the forest there is a huge open valley that I like to visit. It's mostly tall grass, with a few trees here and there. Birds just love it down there. There's a nice river that runs through that section of the park. One of these times I'll get back down there, but for now I'm enjoying the sanctuary of the forest.

There were several other people here because of the unusually warm weather, so I didn't stay too long. I really like to be alone out here, which I am on most days. Once I begin going deep into the place, it won't matter how many people come here anyway, because most others don't go very far. I guess all of that makes me kind of a loner, but that's the way I like it, so it's okay.

So with my first trip to the woods this year out of the way, I'll talk to you later.