When I was growing up our back yard ended where the forest began. There so many things for young children to see and do in the forest. Deep in the "woods," as we referred to it, there was a pond surround by trees and filled with fish - often me and my friends would see people fishing there and we fished there a lot too. There were a several creeks and streams that slithered through that forest and we had many good times in and around those too. Among those streams we found small waterfalls, snakes, frogs and all sorts of creatures. In that forest was also a pine thicket that was hard to wade through but if you reached its center there was the perfect pine to climb in for a great vantage point.
As boys me and my friends became amazed on many days by what we saw out there in those woods. We were often too loud to co-exist too comfortably with the creatures that called those woods home but we knew they were there. That forest was like a biology book right outside my back door.
My friends and I would challenge ourselves to walk farther, explore more, walk until we walked out of those woods. When we made it out of the woods we would go home that day knowing more about them. We would then have cooler destinations to go back to and re-examine. We built club houses out of old junk all around those hills and hollows. Those projects always lead to dragging junk from one side of the forest to another in an effort to have the perfect stuff in these hide outs.
I remember once we found an area out there where water came out from the ground and flowed from there throughout the rest of the woods. We didn't know it then but that was a natural spring and it was a haven for crawfish - which we all referred to as craw-dads. We wasted many hours there trying to catch some of those little critters, with little success.
Among all my memories of that forest one of the most beautiful places that I ever saw there and have seen few places since that were more breath taking - was a Beech Nut grove that towered over a bed of ferns. We found it by accident actually, me and two of my best friends were pilfering about looking for things to drag back to one of our clubs. Talking about life as we knew it then, explaining to one another the unexplainable - we seemed to have all the answers. That day we wandered farther than we ever had and when we reached this shady grove we were amazed to see a sea of green wood ferns blanketing at least a fifty yard circle of land. Popping up ever few yards from the ferns were some of the largest and most beautiful Beech Nut trees that I ever saw. Trees that seemed perfect to carve a heart in with yours and your favorite girls name. It was such a neat place that even then we stopped and just looked at it. Like my Nannie's carpet we looked at it and walked around. Even a few rough young boys knew that this was much too nice to trample. That was a place that we all made our way back to many times, often sitting on a stump or climbing a nearby tree to sit in and talk.
Last week I watched a news program that involved an Austin neighborhood association that was purchasing land adjacent to their properties and donating it to conservation. This being an effort to preserve some land that has not been developed for future generations of home owners to gain from the beauty of this natural habitat. I sat amazed and pleased by these families efforts to keep the land surrounding their properties undeveloped and rugged. Knowing the benefits that they and their children stand to gain from this big biology lesson right in their back yards. I don't think that they will ever stumble on a grove of Beech Nut trees or a blanket of ferns here in Central Texas; the climate is just not conducive for those types of plants. Regardless of what they find, it will be beautiful in its own right. What they will see in those fields and forest will be worth more than making a few bucks on them. I think in the long run we will see that we take the high road when we decide not to "pave paradise to put up a parking lot" (sang by Joni Mitchell).
There were countless lessons that I learned in those woods behind my house growing up. There were things that are still etched in my mind that I saw there. Dogwoods dotting the high and low spots, the fallen trees that made for perfect bridges for those beautiful streams, the "Crawdad hole," the pond, and the Beech Nut grove. Every turtle, all the snakes, all the fish and frogs that we snuck up on. The valuable lessons that we learned out there cannot be taught from a book - all of this we saw firsthand. I like it when I hear about great things like this happening on the news. It is good to know that there is still a whole lot of goodness out there…and we don't always have to look that far to see it!
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