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Everyone is entitled to a home where the sun, the stars, open fields, giant trees, and smiling flowers are free to teach an undisturbed lesson of life.

-Jens Jensen, landscape planner, 1930s

Palo Duro Canyon

As an outdoor enthusiast, I'm embarrassed to say I still have not been to Palo Duro Canyon. I've spent time in a good portion of our state parks and lots of time in Texas' two national parks, but I've yet to make it to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. My problem is that for the past ten years, the Big Bend area has been my playground. Let's be honest...that will never change. But I'd like to make more time to be able to explore Palo Duro as well.

Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest in the US. That's right, it's the Grand Canyon of Texas. Accoring to TPWD, it's 120 miles long and 20 miles wide at its widest. (The GC is 270 miles long and up to 18 miles wide.) It's just outside of Amarillo (at about the same lat as Albuquerque), so it's a cool nine hours drive from Austin.

The park hosts a 50-mile Ultra Race every year at the bottom of the canyon. Dios mio! Don't think I'll be participating in that if I want to keep my original knees. But our "official state play," Texas, (of course) is performed at the park's amphitheater for a few weeks every summer. (They've been doing it since the 1960s.) It's down at the base of the canyon and a BBQ dinner is served before the show starts. A musical at the bottom of a gigantic red rock canyon on a summer night? Yes, please!

Hike for Greens

My awesome pal Priya is hiking all 2,175 miles (Georgia to Maine) of the Appalacian Trail this year. Not only am I infinitely jealous, I'm also proud of her for for supporting a great cause along the way.

Priya and I both just completed the LBJ School graduate program in public affairs and also both taught with Teach For America in the Rio Grande Valley. There is a small family of charter schools in the Valley called IDEA, which was started by other former Teach For America teachers. IDEA schools have implemented Outdoor Classrooms in the Valley where children are raise and harvesting their own food. Priya is supporting this effort on her walkabout.

This is a cause that is dear to my heart as I also started an Outdoor Classroom of my own while teaching in the Valley. I received my Master Gardener certification, started a Gardening Club, and implemented the gardening process into the fifth grade science curriculum. While the actual food production process was definitely challenging, the program was a success. In the years that I taught at Trevino Elementary, the fifth grade science TAKS (state assessment) passing rate jumped from 33% when I started to 87% when I left. And of course, the students also gained a more valuable understanding of the connectedness of living things, importance of resource conservation and patience, and sheer enjoyment of harvesting something they contributed to the Earth. I am a firm believer in Outdoor Classrooms and know from experience that they work.

One of my former students with a new friend from the garden
(this is one of most favorite pictures ever)

So if you also share a love of outdoor education, take a look at Priya's Hike for Greens blog. She's got information about how to contribute to IDEA through her site. Hike on, lady!

S P R I N G!

Scenes from my front yard:


And down the block:

Loving it :) Only downside, I got overzealous on my bike ride yesterday and have very burned shoulder blades :( Time to get the sunblock out of hiding. I'll take it :)

Central Park was Not Always a Park

I had the pleasure of attending the Texas Trails Network conference last month in Waco as a City of Austin representative. I love getting paid to do things I would have liked to do anyway :) The conference had a little more focus on urban (read: paved) trails than my co-worker and I were hoping, but still, I learned a lot and had a great day.

Some of the things I scribbled down and thought others would also find interesting:

• Americans work 163 hours more each month than they did twenty years ago. That's four additional weeks of work each year!
• The Lady Bird Lake Trail is now the number one tourism destination in Austin (surpassing the Capitol)! 3,000 to 15,000 people use it every day.

The keynote address was given by Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia.
Penalosa was a radical and controversial mayor. Here are some of the things he accomplished in his three years as mayor:

• Reduced murder rate by 2/3
• Created a BRT system (bus rapid transit)
  
• Planted over 100,000 trees
• Created/refurbished over 12,000 parks
• Built 50 new schools
• Increased children's enrollment in school by 34%
• Built over 300 kms of bike paths and greenways
• Created a referendum (passed by the public) that created a yearly car free day and decided that from the year 2015 onwards, there would be no cars in Bogota during rush hours (6 AM to 9 AM and 4:30 PM to 7:30 PM).

Penalosa is very focused on equity and the notion that cities should maximize happiness for ALL of their citizens. In the context of our conference, Penalosa talked about parks and greenways. Here is one of this thoughts on parks:

Higher income groups always have access to nature at beach houses, lake cabins, mountain chalets, on vacations - or in urban settings at golf courses or large gardens. Parks allow the rest of society that contact as well.

He spoke of his experience building bike lanes that connected poorer areas of the city to downtown areas where many people worked. One point that resonated with me and I'm still ruminating on is the concept of sidewalks/pedestrian crossings at intersections. Think about a major intersection with many pedestrians. Pedestrians must enter the space of the cars by stepping down as they enter the intersection. Penalosa spoke of a different model - so simple, but quite a new one to me at least. Cars must enter the space of the pedestrians. How is that done? It's simple. The sidewalk simply continues at its same height through the intersection. In effect, this makes a speed bump for the cars and forces them to enter the pedestrian space. I wish I could find a picture of this. Imagine what a change this would be for handicapped people, children, bikers.

The only example I have found in the Austin area is in the South Park Meadows shopping center, which unfortunately is EXTREMELY car-dominated. However, the pedestrian crossings are made in this way, so that is a start.

Penalosa really is inspirational and motivating. He did things in his city that no one has been able to accomplish in America in such a short time, let alone Latin America. Here's a short excerpt of an interview with Penalosa talking about possibilities in NYC:

Stuff this White Person Likes

I am a dork, but why exactly? One has to have certain characteristics or interests contributing to their dorkiness. I have many, but I'll give you a big one:

I LOVE LOVE LOVE ROLLERBLADING.

Austin and Dallas are two very different cities, and this holds true to perceptions of inline skating. In Austin, the only great place for it is the Veloway. But even there, rollerbladers are sparse and dominated by cyclists. And not quite cool. But in Dallas, people embrace their inner 1992 and rollerblade without qualms. All kinds of people - I've seen seniors, kids, and even us cool almost-30somethings.

So I'm in Dallas today and what am I most excited about doing while my brother is at work? Rollerblading! Ondre lives in a loft downtown, and the trailhead of the Katy Trail is right outside. The trail is about 5K (one way) and connects downtown with the SMU area. It's a fantastic and very popular urban trail. My family and I have even used it to walk to restaurants for breakfast. People use it to get to train stops as well. But most of all, they walk, run, stroll, bike, and ROLLERBLADE with a smile.

I Love 2009

What an awesome year! Only mere weeks till our new President is officially sworn in and I couldn't be more excited. I love that such an honest, calm, and inclusive person will now be our leader.

On a personal note, this is a big year for me as well. In a mere five months, I will receive my Master of Public Affairs! I'm not going to think about the fact that I will have to take my final class over the summer [ :( ] ...the actual walk across the stage is more important, right? :) Chris and I are also getting married this year - whoohoo! Can't wait to have so many members of both of our families come to our home for the first time. And...I turn thirty this year! Maybe I'm just in an upbeat mood, but it sounds like fun.

I'm also transitioning to a great new trails project at work - the Walk For a Day trail. It's going to be a 34-mile trail going south from Barton Springs pool into Hayes County. The trail is in the very beginning planning phases, and lots of groups and politicians want to be involved (for better or for worse). It is an ambitious project (one of the first in the country to span multiple jurisdictions) and I'm excited to be involved.

As far as resolutions, I feel like lots of transitions are underway for me anyway this year, but I do want to dedicate energy to the great outdoors in a few specific ways: one old, one new.

In high school and college, I loved rock climbing and tried to do it as much as I could. I lived near Stone Works Climbing Gym in high school, and my girlfriends and I went there regularly. Here's a picture of us when we were about fifteen, trying to look like tough climbers.

When I moved to Australia in college, I got really into climbing. I went on several climbing trips in various parts of the country and really started improving. Here's a picture of me on Mount Arapiles, which has been rated one of the top ten climbing spots in the world.

I had three great climbing buddies in Australia, and when we were back in Melbourne we would frequent a gym nearby. Climbing is a sport that you really need a good buddy for. And a lot of trust is involved. It is important to me to find a great climbing buddy this year. I have lived here for too long not to get reintegrated into the climbing scene. So resolution number one - get back into climbing!

My second resolution is a new one, but one I am well equipped for. My awesome awesome brother Ondre gave me his old road bike for Christmas, so my second resolution is to spend more time biking! I've had a mountain bike for years and used to spend a lot of time on local greenbelts, but now I have been using it more for street rides on weekend mornings. I was thinking of buying my own bike, but Ondre was also getting a new one and gave me his. He saved me $1000, what a great guy :) Here is my new bike:
Step One: Master the shoes. I'm a little old ladyish at the moment and hope to get my takeoffs a little improved :) Step Two: Dre and I want to do a bike race together in a few months. Hopefully something laid back (Tour de Fat or something along those lines, right Dre?). I'd like to explore some of those country roads west of Austin sometime soon.

Hope you all are kicking off 2009 in a great way!! Best wishes for the new year!