Nature Walk! (Walking Blog #7)

      I went home for the weekend to spend time with my family and to take a break from the fast-paced life of college. While I was home, I decided to go on my walk for my blog to be in a new location that I have not written about so far. I went on a walk this morning with my mother and my dog, Toby. We walked about a half block and then walked through Dorokstar Park where there is a bike path. We left the house and started our journey.

My house in Reno, Nevada.

        As we were walking away from our home, we saw all the road construction that is happening on our street. It has been going on for over a month now, and it can be really annoying sometimes when you have to drive to drive through dirt piles to get into our driveway. Road construction majorly detracts from the beauty of nature, because instead of looking at my neighbors' landscaping in their front yard, I end up focusing more on the bright orange cones and the randome piles of gravel that line the side of the road.

The road construction outside my house.

      We walked the half-block to the park and before we went down hill into the park, this is the view that we saw.

Dorokstar Park

       I would say that this park is a pretty good place to observe and write about nature. We were walking on the bike path, when my mom said to me, "do you want to go on this little path? We can go see where it leads." I agreed to this venture, and my mom let Toby off his leash so he could roam free. As we were walking through the nature path, we passed by a couple of houses. there were dogs behind fences at these houses and they were barking at us. Above these houses were power lines that birds were sitting on. Every time one of the dogs in the yards of these houses barked, some birds would fly away. I wanted to get a picture of all the birds on the line, but by the time I got close enough to capture the birds, only two were left.

The birdies!

        These birds made me think about the connection that man-made objects have with parts of nature. The birds found these man-made power lines and decided to sit on them, but without human land development, there would be no power lines for birds to sit on, so in a way we are helpful to nature, but in ways, we are detrimental to it. 

The trees with the plastic around their trunks.

        I continued on my walk, and I saw little aspen trees growing, but at the bottoms of the trees were black, plastic tubes. I was wondering why they are there, and I came to the conclusion that people who are trying to restore the park put them there to help them grow.  I guess my neighborhood is doing what it can to beautify the park and to promote nature. This park does a really good job of creating a little nature sanctuary in an urban area, and nature is represented as a calming environment in my neighborhood.  The entire time we were on a walk, people were going on bike rides and runs. They were all enjoying the nature too.

Pretty blueish purple flowers!!!

      We continued our walk to the river and we went over a large bridge. The whole time I could not stop myself from thinking, "Many years ago when this bridge was not here yet, instead of standing on this bridge, I would be waist high in water right now."  I'm glad there was a bridge, because I really don't like going in the river at 8:30 in the morning.

The bridge over the river

I'm really glad that the bridge is here!

I started my trek back home and I realized that even though my dog has been off his leash the whole time we had been at the park, there was a sign at the park entrance that said, "Pets must be leashed at all times." That's weird, there have been multiple other dogs off their leashes too. I guess I'm not the only one who disregards these signs.

Toby, my dog!

The sign.

         It was getting time to end the walk, so my mom, Toby, and I walked back up the little hill and to our house. I do love morning walks.