Emily's Nature Blog

Posts

Airfield Falls

A couple of weeks ago, Reilly, Madi, and I went to Airfield Falls Trailhead to film our video for our final project, and we had a great outdoor experience. One thing that I have enjoyed about this class has been how it has opened my eyes to ways to go and experience nature here in Fort Worth. Since I did not grow up here, I have not known what Fort Worth has to offer as far as nature and outdoors experiences goes. We chose Airfield Falls because none of us had ever been there before or had even heard of it before, and so we thought it would be a fun place to go explore. When we got there, we saw the big airplane structure that marked the start of the trail, so we knew we were in the right place. The day was a perfect, sunny, 70 degrees. It was the temperature where I get goosebumps if I'm standing in the shade, but the sunlight feels perfectly warm. As soon as we got started walking we got warmed up. but not to the point where we were sweating. The 'trail' was a paved sid...

The Big Dam Bridge

Over Thanksgiving Break, I did a few outdoor activities with my family when I was home in Little Rock, and going to the Big Dam Bridge was one of them. The Big Dam Bridge is one of my favorite spots in Little Rock. Its base is where we would meet for cross country practices in middle and high school, and I have met my friends there for walks more times than I can count. It is one of the many great spots in Little Rock where one can experience nature and get outside, all while making it a fun, yet simple social gathering. On Tuesday, it was my mom, my sister, and I. We drove down the hill to the Arkansas River and parked the car. There are running and biking trails all up and down both sides of the Arkansas River, and the Big Dam Bridge is a walking bridge that connects the two sides' trails. It passes over the dam that helps control the water levels of the river during rainy and dry seasons. It is also outfitted with a lock for ships to pass through. After discussing the impact o...

The Fillmore Tree

When I was on the phone with my mom a few days before Thanksgiving Break, she told me that the tree in our old house’s yard got cut down by the current owners. The news shocked and deeply saddened me because I had so many memories of playing around that tree growing up, in my eyes it was iconic to the look of the house and property, and it was also just one of the most beautiful and impressive trees I have ever seen in its own right. The tree was located in the yard on the right front side of our little old yellow house. Sometime before I remember, my dad attached a child swing to one of its lower branches, and I loved spending Saturday mornings with him pushing me in the swing. He would always do the thrilling ‘underdog’ trick with me where he pushed the swing up until he could run forward underneath it, and I went so high and fast that it always felt like I was flying. In the fall, my dad, sister, and I would rake up the leaves the tree...

Final Project: Nature is Neat!

Video: https://vimeo.com/304523139 Nature is Neat: Justification Throughout this course we were able to discover some of the natural beauty of Texas that we had not really seen before. Discovering all these little bits of nature interspersed within Fort Worth helped us see a new side of the city. With most of us being from places that are defined by their picturistic scenery it reminded us how thankful we are to have grown up in a place where nature is so easily accessible. While reminiscing about our childhoods and easily accessible nature we also recalled the old educational videos we were shown in school that were filled with awkward pauses, questions and word art. We decided for our nature video to pull in these memories from our childhood and create an ‘informational’ video about nature in the true 90s style. We filmed our video at the Trinity Trails Airfield Trail Head, out by the waterfall. While we were enjoying the scenery we decided to make the word ‘nature...

Landscape Paintings

A couple of class periods ago, our class went to the Amon G. Carter Museum of American Art to look at landscape paintings. Because of construction, apparently many of the paintings we intended to see were not on display. However, we still got to see some stunning landscape paintings and a plentiful amount of other paintings that seemed to honor nature and man's interaction in it. I really enjoyed the paintings depicting the American west, with its cowboys, Native Americans, and cattle. One painting that I could have stared at forever was Sunrise, Yosemite Valley , and Albert Bierstadt painted it around 1870. Yosemite is one of the most breathtaking places in America, and it took me back to when I visited there with my family a few years ago. It struck me how easily I recognized the scene. A man painted his view in 1870, and I came upon the same scene about 140 years later. I felt like I was really sharing an experience with the artist because I had the same memory and feeling a...

Nature Observation #3

From One Sun to Another I walk along the sidewalk after class. It is a bright, blustery day, but the wind does not bite as hard as it often does. Still, I scrunch my shoulders and wrap my coat sleeves around my hands to keep them from the cold. I feel the wind glide around my jacket-encapsulated torso, and I am grateful the material breaks the wind instead of allowing it through to my core. I do not do well in the cold. I walk quickly on to minimize my continued time in the cold, and as the sun’s heat does what it can to warm my face, something jumps out at me from the corner of my eye. I turn to look behind my shoulder, trying to find it again. I backtrack a few paces and there it is. The grass glints varying hues of green all around, and the season has spewed the dead brown leaves throughout the blades. The ground is a canvas of this uniform green and brown pattern. One thing has disrupted it. Up from the range of little green shoots and crumpled brown leaves rises a bright yell...