Most Popular

Most Viewed
Most Commented
News
"Most Popular" tools sponsored by:
Recent Articles
Related Articles

Recent Articles By Jim Schutze

National Features

  • Broward-Palm Beach New Times
    Last Step to Redemption

    Drug counselor Richard Entrekin swam a little too easily in a sea of sharks.

    By Amy Guthrie
  • Village Voice
    The Cro-Mag Diaries

    Remembering the brutal life and times of John "Bloodclot" Joseph, New York hardcore icon.

    By Rob Harvilla
  • Miami New Times
    Class Warfare

    At a Florida school, kids threaten teachers, whose bosses look the other way.

    By Francisco Alvarado
  • SF Weekly
    Party Crashers

    If you think Ralph Nader won't screw the Democrats again, you're not paying attention.

    By John Geluardi

As I hike down from the high embankment of the levee and out of the Great Trinity Forest, rain and dusk pushing me on, not to mention mosquitoes, I find two cop cars waiting for me on the tarmac below—a discovery that does not surprise. In fact it warms my heart a bit.

The parking lot where I'd left my car, after all, is just outside Turner Courts, a public housing complex in the Bon Ton area near Rochester Park at the bottom of Old South Dallas, a district long bedeviled by drugs and crime. And right now it's getting dark.

One cop has his window rolled down waiting for me to walk over to him. He wonders—I gauge all of this by his facial expression—if I stole the car, if I am trying to get the car stolen, if I have been out there in the woods burying somebody or, judging by my wet mud-streaked mien, if I recently have been disinterred myself.

"Hi," I say.

He stares. He's a white guy, short blond hair, maybe 32 years old.

"What are you doing?"

"I was out hiking on the Buckeye Trail," I say.

He stares, waiting for me to make sense.

I know, of course, that my statement is neither simple nor innocent. I'm an old white guy in nylon rain pants with hiking poles. I might as well be Rollerblading through Turner Courts in a Speedo with a martini in one hand and a parasol in the other.

My statement is a test. The city says this area, long a disused dumping ground and floodway inhabited by snakes, insects and meth cooks, is now a vast urban forest and park area. So great. Here I am in my dorky little white convertible and my Sierra Designs trekking togs on an April evening—out for a damn hike, you sons of bitches.

If it's a park, OK, I'm here to do park things. I mean, what the hell? Is the city going to put up signs that say, "Caution: Some people who enter this park may be killed for their watches"?

"Is that your car?" asks the cop.

"Yes."

He looks me up and down, eyes unblinking.

"What is your last name?"

I tell him.

"Do you know where you are?"

Oh, great. Next he's going to ask me what month it is and who's the president of the United States. Maybe I should get used to this. In a few more years this is how people will greet me.

"Yes," I say.

He cranes around with a certain look. He wants to say, "Planet Earth, right?" But instead he says, "OK." Very much in the tone of, "OK, it's your funeral." But he doesn't say that, either.

I say, "Thank you." And I mean it.

Both cops watch while I pack up. I can't quite get the nylon rain pants off over my muddy hiking boots, so I wind up holding the ankle of my right leg in both hands doing a little flapping, one-legged hop-scotch around the open trunk of the car for a while.

They stare. Not a crack of a smile. They just want me the hell out of here.

This was my second afternoon of adventure in the "Great Trinity Forest." My outing on the day before ended in a very similar fashion. I emerged from a different portion of the forest to find a private security person parked next to my car with his window rolled down staring at me as if I had just floated to Earth with an umbrella for a parachute.

On that afternoon I also said, "Hi."

He also said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "Hiking."

He began to pull away slowly, the tires of his oversized pick-up sputtering on the gravel. "I was wondering," he said.

Ah, wonder. Isn't that what nature is supposed to do for us all?

The Dallas Morning News ran a story April 7 under the headline, "Nature Center, other projects blooming in Great Trinity Forest." The first line was, "Note to hikers and bikers, birders and boaters: The pace is picking up in the Great Trinity Forest."

So, fine. I dug out my hiking boots and my poles and even my special blue water bladder and decided to put the Great Trinity Forest to my own personal test. My wife won't be seen with me with the blue water bladder, which she says looks like an enema bag. Well, you know what? She wasn't invited.

The "Great Trinity Forest" has always been more of a concept than a reality. We're really talking about 6,000 acres of floodway along the reaches of the Trinity River through poor, sometimes very tough areas in the southern half of the city. Much of it was cleared for farmland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, then in many places developed as neighborhoods. Most of the area was abandoned and allowed to "return to nature" within the last 40 years.

Although groves of hardwood forest occur in the area, the larger share of the land is second or third growth dominated by invasive species such as Chinese privet, considered an aggressive weed in much of the Southern United States.

Even the name, "Great Trinity Forest," is of fairly recent and somewhat disingenuous origin. I spoke with Jeanie Fritz, wife of Ned Fritz, the dean of Texas naturalists, who remembered that the name was dreamed up 10 to 15 years ago by environmentalists as a political ploy.

"The thinking was that, if we could name it, that would be more of an incentive to preserve it," she said.

If the greens hadn't "saved" the area, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would have clear-cut it, then paved and graded it to create a broad smooth drain for the river, designed to move flood waters efficiently out of the city.

Write Your Comment show comments (8)

  1. Back in the day, I made the requisite canoe trip down the Trinity and I've got to say that the experience was transformative - in a good way.

    The trip took our sizeable group of rich white people the better part of a Tuesday, stopping for lunch under the Houston Street viaduct to imagine 16 lanes of high speed traffic sharing the riverway with us and then on through the Great Trinith Forrest to pull our boats out under a highway overpass near Loop 12.

    We loaded the boats back on the transport and were back at our starting point in roughly 20 minutes.

    And here's the thing I remember: the difference in the pace of the river and understanding that it took nearly the whole day to experience canoe journey and only 20 minutes to get back by car.

    I found trememdous value in realizating the "dimension" of the river and the forrest and in how auto travel distorts the reality of damned near everything in our lives.

    And yes Jin, Democracy can be brilliant at times.

    Comment by Catbird — April 17, 2008 @ 12:45PM

  2. So spend "10 hundred kabillion dollars" to santize the place, put in trails, cut out those nasty weeds that are actually apart of the ecosystem and light the place up like a christmas tree so the north Dallas white people feel safe from us poor Southern sector folk but don't you dare pave over the upper Trinity portion. Talk about an oxy-MORON.
    How about we keep the ecosystem intact like it should be. Forget about the lights. Put a minimal amount of trails to provide access for the handicap but enough spacing in the concrete so the white north Dallas folk crash and burn on their roller blades. Then use the kabillion dollars for some sanitized nature area somewhere above I-30 that the rich people of north Dallas can enjoy. Sounds like a winner to me!

    Comment by Michael — April 17, 2008 @ 10:59PM

  3. I am so disappointed with this article, I don't even know where to start.

    Jim, you are far from the first white guy- or girl- to park at the end of Bexar Street at the Buckeye Trailhead. I want you know that Groundwork Dallas did a beatification project there in 2006 at the Buckeye trailhead, with volunteers from our Americorps Team, North Texas Master Naturalists and the community. Yes, the community that lives in those scary projects next door, the community you apparently needed protection from... We got several donations for the project with was estimated at around $20,000 in value to the City- that kiosk that you see was donated at a cost of $7,000. Also, you were right next to Rochester Park- if you follow the levee about a half mile south you'd see some really wonderful ponds out there, and "Bart Simpson" Lake. Our Green Team works on a wetland plant restoration project out there, right alongside with local fishermen. We do annual cleanups out there too. We are also building a soft-surface bike trail out there this Summer.

    There are many things that our forest is and that it can be. There are many uses for the nearly 7,000 acres. Groundwork Dallas has already built six miles of nature trails, including one that leads to the Comanche Storytelling Place, over where DART has done more damage than the City could possibly dream of. I wish you would write a story about that, but it doesn't seem like you care about anything that isn't a political wedge associated with the Trinity River Project. It's like this is your raison d'etre. And it's getting a little boring, especially now that you have appointed yourself as our savior of the forest too.

    Again, there are many things that our forest can be. We have room to do many things. We can build all manner of trails and other recreation. I see it as a great regional amenity. We are only just now getting started with all the many things that we can do here. It wont happen overnight and will take time and a coordinated effort from a number of entities. I know you hate joining groups, but you don't need to make this your one-man's-crusade. I just wish you wouldn't continue to ignore the efforts that others have contributed to the project. Your readers deserve better. The citizens of Dallas deserve better.

    I have offered on several occasions to take you on a tour of our trails. I would love for you to come out and see our Green Team in action- that's a program of trained kids from the communities that surround the GTF to learn all sorts of environmental skills and apply them in the form of a job. Imagine that- poor kids from South Dallas using our GTF as a way to learn environmental skills and get paid!

    By-the-way, there are many "hidden" ponds in the GTF. Give me a chance and I'll show them to you. And when you get a chance, look up the efforts of Groundwork Dallas. www.groundworkdallas.org. We are always looking for more volunteers!

    Comment by Casie Pierce — April 20, 2008 @ 01:56PM

  4. I do love the outdoors and spend many days and nights canoeing, hiking, and camping each year.

    Ive been into the 'great' forest many times since I was a teenager. It is, by far, the largest collection of trash trees I have seen anywere in the US. Before you cottonwood huggers cry foul, even the Mccommas landfill is an "ecosystem."

    Comment by Paul — April 20, 2008 @ 05:47PM

  5. Dear Jim,

    Sorry but for once I have to disagree with you. Not only is there tremendous potential in the Great Trinity Forest (We were going to call it the hundred acre wood but that was taken) It is already developing into a place for individuals and families to enjoy themselves.

    It was not too many years ago that the area now known as Uptown was full of ramshackle houses,meth labs and scary individuals. Then along came the streetcars and some visionary individuals and Wa La. I will point out to you that, even though you have some issues with the forest and the neighborhood you were able to accomplish something many urban residents cannot, a walk in a deep forest environment within minutes of a major metropolitan center.

    I would enjoy taking you into the parts of the forest where my Boy Scouts have completed Eagle Scout projects recognized as among the best ever completed in Circle Ten Council.
    You might even feel safer with a brave 14 or 15 year old Boy Scout along as your guide.

    Developing and unlocking the potential of the Forest is a vast project and will require many years and lot's of hard work from many individuals, but then...it's a vast forest too!

    John Landrum
    Scout Master
    BSA Troop 33

    Comment by John Landrum — April 21, 2008 @ 02:29PM

  6. Dear Jim,

    Sorry but for once I have to disagree with you. Not only is there tremendous potential in the Great Trinity Forest (We were going to call it the hundred acre wood but that was taken) It is already developing into a place for individuals and families to enjoy themselves.

    It was not too many years ago that the area now known as Uptown was full of ramshackle houses,meth labs and scary individuals. Then along came the streetcars and some visionary individuals and Wa La. I will point out to you that, even though you have some issues with the forest and the neighborhood you were able to accomplish something many urban residents cannot, a walk in a deep forest environment within minutes of a major metropolitan center.

    I would enjoy taking you into the parts of the forest where my Boy Scouts have completed Eagle Scout projects recognized as among the best ever completed in Circle Ten Council.
    You might even feel safer with a brave 14 or 15 year old Boy Scout along as your guide.

    Developing and unlocking the potential of the Forest is a vast project and will require many years and lot's of hard work from many individuals, but then...it's a vast forest too!

    John Landrum
    Scout Master
    BSA Troop 33

    Comment by John Landrum — April 21, 2008 @ 02:32PM

  7. Two years ago, along with two other photographers, I spent many months photographing in the Great Trinity Forest for an exhibition we presented on the forest. The three of us all went into the forest individually, scores of times and not once did any of us have an experience as described by Jim Schutze. The Great Trinity Forest is a greatly underappreciated natural asset of Dallas and greater North Texas and there is much more there than just a bunch of trees. The thing that always struck me on my hikes on the Buckeye Trail and other trails was the volume and variety of the birds, from hawks to woodpeckers and much more. While the forest is by no means the prettiest forest in the world, there is a lot of beauty to be found. If you look for the bad, you’ll find the bad. If you look for the good, you’ll find the good. My personal experiences show there to be much more good than bad and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the forest. For anyone who would like to know more about the forest and of some positive things that are happening there, I suggest they find out more about the non-profit Groundwork Dallas organization that has been doing great work in and around the forest on a shoestring budget for the past several years.

    For those interested, I have posted a short video on YouTube about my experiences in the forest and with Groundwork Dallas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIEb9vm-iOA

    While the forest may not be perfect, you have to start somewhere. I could care less about the road project, but I do care about the forest. Too often I think we only care about the "now." Future generations will thank us if we start taking care of the Great Trinity Forest now. And, from my perspective, taking care of the forest doesn't necessarily mean paving the trails, adding lots of lighting, etc. I'd love to see some of the wildness embraced and preserved.

    Comment by Scot Miller — April 21, 2008 @ 02:43PM

  8. A five minute walk from our back door and my wife and I are on the edge of The Great Trinity Forest. Our most frequent sight are the Giant Water Fowl that stand nearly 3ft high with an equal if not greater wing spand. Red Tail Hawks often soar above us. A Coyote was waiting near the Big Spring two days ago, and last fall I could not believe my eyes: A White Tail Buck near the same area.
    Some years ago we had a trail on which we rode Horse back all the way to White Rock Creek.
    Much of the Forest that I have been in is almost impassable. More maintained trails would make hiking,clean up projects and Horseback riding more inviting even in the Forest's most wildernes stage.
    Bill Pemberton

    Comment by Bill — April 30, 2008 @ 11:52PM

About Us | Work for Dallas Observer | Esubscribe | Free Dallas Classifieds | National Advertising | Privacy Policy
Problem With the Site? | RSS | Site Map
©2008 Village Voice Media All rights reserved.
dallasobserver.com

Dallas Observer Insiders

  • Local food, music and news blasts
  • Free Stuff

buy, sell, trade (6,829)
musician (1,582)
rentals (12,852)
jobs (9,451)
adult entertainment (8,569)