A Chiling Hike: The City of Desoto and Dallas County - Essay Example

The Roy Orr Hiking Trail is a 3.6-mile trail nestled in the heart of Desoto, and it consists of five different possible routes: Mirkes Parkway-Town Center, Town Center-Polk Street, Polk Street-Meadows Pkwy, Meadows Parkway-Plantation, and Plantation-Murphy Hills Park.

 I hadn’t walked the trail in about four months, so I set out to see what new things I would discover during my winter walk. It was the first time that I had walked the trail during the winter months. Texas is usually seasonable even in winter; people don’t associate it with snow and ice.

However, sometimes it does snow in Texas, and during my hike, this was one of those times. I wore lots of layers and took a notebook, a pencil, and my thermos full of hot coffee. When I started on the trail at 1 PM, it was 17 degrees, and there was no one around. Usually, I see a few other people around on the trails, but on this day it was very empty. Also, because the trees had all lost their leaves, I was able to see farther along the sides of the trail. I saw several houses that I had not noticed when the trees were leafier.

As I mentioned above, the trail has some steep hills and some that are gentle. As I walked, it seemed that the steep hills were steeper than before. I walked for about two and a half miles, and stopped to look around and take a rest. When I looked around, I saw more of the tree trunks; again, this was because of the lack of leaves. I noticed a few carvings in the tree trunks that I had not seen before. I usually stop in the same spot for a break, because it is a shady area. However, with the lack of leaves, there was less shade.

The whole area was very desolate. I was used to seeing leaves on the trees and squirrels running around. This time, although I walked three and a half miles, I did not see one squirrel. There were other differences between my normal hikes and this one, as well. It seemed like sounds were louder, and I noticed more rocks and boulders. There seemed to be fewer trees at the end of the trail. Although the air was cold and refreshing, there was also a feeling of death and desolation, and also of emptiness.

I thought about the shortness of life and pleasure in such an environment. “The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meager opportunities to the full, pathetic extent” (Woolf, 2011). I thought about death quite a bit on my walk, and I thought about my father, who is very ill. I prayed a couple of times and even cried once or twice. The coldness, dryness, quietness, and dead-looking trees made me feel that death was all around me.

I felt that my familiar nature had disappeared. “At the same time, her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burnt away and her heaving mouthparts cracked like pistol fire” (Dillard, 2011).