Into the Heart of Darkness

As the photo's that Kris has posted will attest today was our first family foray into the forest. (nice alliteration eh?) Kris woke up this morning with a mild to stormy case of the blues. On our morning walk, she and I discussed what we needed to do to make today a better day. After she discarded all of my sordid and leering suggestions we settled on a hike. Preferably a hike where we wouldn't encounter any idiots or pavement and where we could make believe we were back in the wilds of the Colorado way-up-high.

We settled on Cedar Hills State Park. Its fairly close, and comes close to meeting our two requirements. Now, bear in mind that this was to be the first time Kris and I had taken our offspring into the uncharted wilderness that is Cedar Hills State Park. Heretofore referred to as Itchy Cedar (hot-as-hell) Hills State Park. We packed everything we could think of; 2 backpacks, 3 bottles of water for the Wild-boy, water for us (not enough), diapers, wipes, plastic bags, strollers, blankets (big and small) my new GPS (the batteries, unbeknownst to me were practically dead), compass, telescope, bug spray, (forgot sunscreen...grrrr) and so on and so on. Those of you with kids are chuckling already. We know now, trust us we know.

and so this is how it went.

We arrived, chipper and rarin' to go. Then we got out of the car. I shit you not, the first thing I did was walk up to a nearby faucet and soak my head and hair completely. I am fuzzy on the details (from the heat) but I think I did that to put out the fire that the sun had kindled in my hair during the seven seconds I stood unprotected in its direct path. Then once Kris had finished changing Wilder, she wet her hair as well. Then we soaked Wilders whole poor little self. Then I rewet mine, as it had dried in the intervening four minutes. Did this little occurence, the fact that my hair DRIED in four minutes make any impact on my common sense you ask? I answer "why no". I can only assume my brain was pretty well reduced to mush and ash already, by the aforementioned fiery raging death orb in the sky.

We headed out into the dusty, gritty, dry, thornbush infested country side. We were slightly hampered due to the fact that the thorns averaged three inches in length. Kris made heroic (Heroine?) efforts to prevent Wilder from death or mutilations and that after fourty yards we were sweating through our clothes but like heatstroked lemmings we pushed on.

We did come across some startlingly beautiful stands of thistles and wildflowers. The bees were buzzing, the flies were flying and some pretty cool 'ladybugs' on steroids were spotted. Kris and I had a brief, uplifting conversation about Bobcats and their presence in the park. After a bit, (I really have no idea how much of a bit) we realized we had hit the bottomland of the area we were hiking in. Were it to rain, the are we were in would be inundated and likely a bit swampy. The long and the short of this bit of trivia is that the trail was washed out. Now I don't want to toot the collective K and J outback horn too much, but I will say this for reference. K and I have walked out of a Desert, in pitch dark, across desert slick rock. Over crevasse, along cliff faces and across a distance that it took us two days to make coming in in six hours going out, using only dead reckoning and my odd ability to directionally smell. Now we did that. However down in this dried up bog in a piss-ant little state park near Dallas Texas with our brains cooked by the heat and wilder looking like a broiled prawn we actually went in circles three times. I stopped, Kris stopped and we figured out what we would do.

"get the hell out of here." we both said. (not in unison, like in a movie. THAT would have been very cool. Buth thats not what happened.

and thats what we did.

we headed out, made it with only one minor heat stroke like cramp (on my part) Wilder suffered a scratch along his cheeck. (he claims the tree looked worse than he did.) and we made it to Joe Poole Lake, we sat there long enough to not feel like we had wasted the trip. (actually it was very nice. The lap of the waves, the cool breeze off the water, the call of the female Redneck Texan teaching its youngling to swim, "no flap yer arms Percy, flap em, flap em. Ok now , kick yer feets like a frog, yeah, like a frog. 'as's iyt! kick em, yeah, like a frog does. whoo hooo! look at him!")

then we went to Sonic, ate a couple of hamburgers and came home to brag to all our family and friends about how tough we are.

J&K with love.