“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” -Aldo Leopold
On Wednesday, February 18th around 9:30 in the morning before school I put on the warmest clothes I could find and I went to my favorite spot in Austin, Red Bud Isle. It was an extremely chilly morning in Austin, almost 30 degrees. There was no sun in sight just a huge grey sky with grey gloomy clouds. I could tell it had rained overnight because everything was wet and muddy. However despite the mud and the freezing temperature there were still several dogs and their owners, fishermen under a huge tent at the end of the pier they had set up, squirrels running around, and birds singing as loud as they could.
When I first arrived to Red Bud, I decided to do a quick walk around the trail to find a (semi warm) spot where I would want to observe the nature around me for the next hour or so. As I walked the loop of Red Bud, I was pretty much the only one on the trail, (besides a few joggers) everyone else was around the “circle” watching all the dogs swim and play. While I was walking all of a sudden I felt a couple of wet rain drops fall on my head, when I looked up to see where they were coming from, a little squirrel was hopping around on the wet tree above me crunching on a nut. I walked closer to the squirrel to take a picture of it and it didn’t even move it just kept on crunching on that nut.
Like the previous month many of the trees at Red Bud were bare, however throughout the sides of the trails there were gorgeous pinkish-purple flowers on Texas Red Bud trees (also called Cercis canadensis var. trees) that let out the most amazing smell that was enhanced by the moist air.There were also beautiful bunches of big white blossoms that mixed in wonderfully with the Pinkish-purple Texas Red Bud trees.
After finally walking around the trail I found a secluded spot off one of those little pathways that I just love and sat on a rock on the edge of the lake. Due to the cold temperature, thick, white fog rolled quickly over the still clear lake. The fog made Red Bud feel like something out of a movie and completely different then any of my other experiences at the park. There was also little thin pieces of ice around the lake and a little dust of frost over the tree trunk branches.
