A nature-loving, law-practicing Friend of Fair Park read the Heard Natural Science Museum post below and offers his own thoughts about other natural wonders this area has to offer. As it turns out, not all of Dallas is paved over, not yet:
"That post about the Heard makes me think of another story idea, Nature in Dallas. You know, there's a lot more here than people generally think. I spent many many great times at the Dallas Nature Center, now Cedar Ridge Preserve. There's also the Spring Creek Forest, a truly amazing place. And, of course, there's the recently developing Trinity Forest.It is hot now, it's true, but for much of the year these places are truly a wilderness in the city. I highly reccomend Cedar Ridge. Audubon is trying to buy the nearby Dogwood Canyon. That too is a pretty interesting tale in it's own right: The place is a very unique eco-system on the Cedar Hill escarpment full of hills, woods and small streams."
In fact, the day after Christmas last year, The Dallas Morning News ran a piece about Audubon Dallas' partnership with Cedar Hill--as well as the state and national Audubon societies--in turning Dogwood Canyon into a 250 -acre preserve, with a $2 million education center due to be completed late next year or early 2008. (Given the story ran during the holidays, you will all be excused for missing it.) It's an impressive and expensive proposition, but our Friend's right: It's an intriguing story that began with a 40-acre donation by a couple who bought some land down south as a private getaway full of dogwood trees (of course) and wound up helping turn it into a public treasure. --Robert Wilonsky