Moving Forward but not On

Coming back to what matters most while pondering the consequences of the last 10 months.

Geraldine Watson’s now-empty cabin at the Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve in Tyler County.

Sunday morning was the coldest day so far this fall for us here in southeast Texas. A cold front arrived late Saturday evening bringing with it air temperatures that I am not fond of and would prefer never to experience if given the chance. Despite that, we bundled up and my husband, son, and I drove over to the Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve to spend a few hours volunteering with some other folks, known and unknown. My husband Chris and I have been coming to the Preserve on and off since we found out about it in 2010. Geraldine Watson, the former owner of the property and the Preserve’s namesake, was still alive at that time but we never had the fortune to meet her. Geraldine, among many others, spent countless hours (years) advocating for the creation of the Big Thicket National Preserve. Eventually their decades of persistence paid off and the Preserve was created in 1974 alongside its sister preserve, Big Cypress National Preserve. My two favorite National Preserves.

I actually need to dedicate a significant portion of my writing here to Geraldine and the Big Thicket but I’ll work through that soon enough. I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the last few months about the Big Thicket and there is far more to know that I could ever have imagined. Needless to say, I’m on an educational journey about Texas nature and will continue sharing what I learn as time goes on.

There were only five adults volunteering on Sunday, plus my son who is a little too young to work under the WRNP’s age guidelines for volunteers. Eventually he will be old enough to participate and hopefully come to love this little piece of east Texas as much as Chris and I do. Our goal on Sunday was to prepare the Preserve for a prescribed burn hopefully in January, though sometimes they happen as late at March due to weather conditions and availability of the burn crew. It doesn’t seem like a lot but it does take significant time to weed-eat down grass and brush from the wooden boardwalks and to move debris and pine needles away from the cabin. While we want the fire to refresh the vegetation and provide germination to seeds that require that treatment, we don’t want to burn Geraldine’s iconic cabin nor lose the boardwalks.

I spent a lot of time last week listless and feeling helpless. The finality of losing the state park sat heavy and I couldn’t even really cry about it at first. It took Fleetwood Mac for that to happen—thank you, Stevie. But being focused on another task, looking at the very real, tangible items in front of me that needed to be accomplished at the Preserve helped me realign myself a bit. I joined the Board of Directors at the Preserve last March and even before that had been thinking about ideas and goals for Preserve. I hit the ground running with some things early on this year but my brain has been so wrapped up in this aggravating state park situation that I’d had little brain power for much else. As gut punching as it was to hear the state give up, I felt a little relieved. I could finally focus on some things that I was actually able to control and be proactive on.

Let’s be clear, there was very little in which any of us advocating for the state park could control. We could research until the wee hours of the night and could rally Texans to write, call, or show up in person to voice our support for preserving the state park, but in the end none of us had real power to do anything. There were no decisions being made by the people for which it really mattered. I couldn’t even get some of our most involved environmental groups to pay attention and care. That was beyond depressing and felt like a slap in the face. I am still so thankful for the work Environment Texas did and for the support the Dallas Sierra Club showed us—and still shows us. But yes, in reality, none of us had money to pull strings or were lawmakers with the capability to make the action happen. I will admit, sometimes I feel very stupid about it all. (Oh, here I go, no Stevie needed for tears this time.) What was I thinking that we could force action by our state agencies and representatives? Why did I spend time even daydreaming that we would celebrate with a big group campout when the state park reopened? Why did I think the good guys would actually win? Did our advocacy even matter? I’m so angry.

Getting out of my head, though, and outside was what I needed. I couldn’t wallow because work needed to be done and well, it may be almost winter but damn, it was gorgeous on the landscape. The past peak grasses browning in the sun, the last bits of red and orange tinged leaves clinging to the trees. Even the pitcher plants slowly fading in the savannah at the Preserve were just stunning. There were things right here in front of me that still mattered. And yeah, I can’t control nature either but at least I can help it along here.

A white oak, Quercus alba, on the Big Woods Trail in Woodville.

Afterwards, some of us went to lunch and then the three of us stopped for a short hike on our way home at the Big Woods Trail in Woodville. I only recently learned of its existence and thought it a delightful trail, filled with several larger specimen trees that begged to be hugged, and hope to return to see it in other seasons in the future.

Sparse-lobed grape fern, Sceptridium biternatum, hiding amongst the leaf litter.

It was a long day, one in which we were gone for almost 12 hours, spending at least four of those hours driving. Chris and I would take very long day trips and hikes back before we had a kid, and so when we do those types of trips these days—which isn’t often as we try to combine them into a long weekend—they always invoke some of those feelings and memories from those freer times. It was a fulfilling day.

Distracting myself for a while felt good. It reminded me that there is so much more to fight for. To keep going and to know that loss happens everywhere, every day, and it’s often beyond our control. We can only do our best and hope that the cards aren’t stacked against us from the get-go.

Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and can be found on Instagram at @oceanicwilderness. She hosts two podcasts, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and The Garden Path Podcast.