I pulled up to a random parking lot and began my route. I’d ride my bike, but honestly I’m never quite sure of where to lock it up and have a, perhaps irrational, fear that it will get stolen if I were to leave it in so many of the areas I explore. So, I drove.
It felt … nice out tonight. Hot, sure, but nice. There was a gentleman who was walking out of a retirement home who made a similar comment about the weather as we passed one another.
This retirement community, along with a huge church and several small apartment complexes are among the numerous places I’ve driven past hundreds of times and have never noticed. Finally noticing the church that I’ve missed all of these years was surprising, solely due to its size.
You can’t truly know a place until you immerse yourself in it. And one way to know a place well is to explore it on foot.
An Objective
My objective for the evening was to finish the neighborhood I started two evenings ago. While walking past a seemingly endless number of crepe myrtles and piles of bulk trash still on the curb, I thought—you know, maybe I don’t need to traverse every stretch of pavement and trail through Dallas. Maybe 80% or so is enough?
With this new goal that is bound to change over and over again, I continued to explore the neighborhood, walking by misting sprinklers that are often watering the concrete just as much as they are the grass. There is something wonderful about sprinklers in the summer, though. It's ... refreshing.
Behind the mist of water irrigating the St. Augustine: crepe myrtles and bulk trash.
While crepe myrtles are not native and not ecologically very useful to the area, I love their bark and the beautiful mess of blooms they shower us with in the summer. And while they’re designated as the state shrub of Texas, they are (as far as I know) the only state symbol that isn’t native to the state, or even North America as a whole.
Because of this, and the awful manner in that they are regularly “pruned,” I’d really love to see far less crepe myrtles being used in new plantings, with natives like Diospyros texana (Texas Persimmon), Cercis canadensis var. texensis (Texas Redbud) and Ungnadia species (Mexican Buckeye) trees instead taking their place.
As for bulk trash, well, it’s nice to live in a place where someone just comes and picks it up for you. A benefit of being in the city vs. the country.
And a (Revised) Goal
So for now anyway, on this momentous second route through Dallas, the final goal is this: 10,000+ miles through Dallas, with a photo to accompany each mile. One photo per mile.
I began the route listening to Leon Bridges and Khruangbin’s Texas Sun album and continued with whatever Apple Music decided to serve up afterwards … Toro y Moi, Tame Impala, even a bit of Fleetwood Mac … with the sounds of cicadas in the Texas summer and cars rolling across hot pavement that acts as a nice heatsink to keep things warm in the night (because that’s exactly what we North Texans need: more heat, but I guess that's what the sidewalk sprinklers are for).
I spent some time along major streets, Forest and Marsh, with some stretches providing an ample buffer between the sidewalk and the street, and others with none at all.
But the most important things, once again, were the interactions with random people along the way. 3.5 miles and an hour of my time smiling and waving and saying hi to random people along the way. It did feel pretty nice out there. What a wonderful way to spend some time on a random summer evening in Dallas.
