The Walk

A couple of years ago my wife and I went to a talk given by Danny Trejo. Amongst that which he shared with us was a piece of advice - if you have children, make the effort to peel the tablets, laptops and smartphones from their faces and go walking with them, just once a week. Make it a regular thing, a local park or out in the country or wherever so they will at least have something to look back on which didn't require an internet connection, now that the family evening meal is apparently a thing of the past.

It seemed like good advice. We tried it once or twice and then fell out of the habit, which was a shame because it had been fun.

We're now almost a year into the pandemic, which hasn't made a lot of difference to me, but working from home has made a big difference to my wife - specifically that she's not keen on it; and a huge difference to my stepson who, to put it diplomatically, is now a different shape to what he was this time last year due to his schooling having occured under the exact same conditions as everything else he does, and almost everything else he does is game related, punctuated with two or three daily trips to the kitchen for hot dogs, noodles or diet soda. Therefore, during one of my infrequent - or what I hope are infrequent - non-specific meltdowns brought on by the general crapness of whatever was bothering me that month - my customary and another thing coda focused on Junior, specifically on his recent Cyril Smithification, as I believe is the recognised medical term. I don't care what the weather is like, I probably fumed, every fucking Sunday like we said we'd do whether we feel like it or not, and no exceptions to the rule. This ends here.

I didn't actually say this ends here because it's something generic action heroes in shit films tend to say when their dialogue is written by someone with no actual talent, but had I done so, this would have referred to the kid's lack of exercise; and the maddening fact that he's clearly well aware of needing more exercise, or at least some exercise, or at least that his Cyril Smithification can hardly be viewed as a positive development, and yet he does nothing about it of his own volition; although to be fair that's probably because he's a kid and that's how they work. Anyway, the point is that it was clearly down to us to get things moving.

Our first few outings were to Salado Creek, and the very first one was to the wild stretch between Nacogdoches and Wetmore. The boy was taking part in some birdwatching exercise organised online by the local zoo, at which he volunteered back before the pandemic. Kids all over the city would be spending the day outside, then checking back with lists of all the birds they'd spotted, and our boy is particularly fond of lists and nature, so any chance to combine the two and he's first in the queue. We stopped off at Walmart to buy wellington boots so as to reduce the possibility of being killed by poisonous snakes while crashing around in the wilderness, then headed off for Ladybird Johnson trailhead. From there we walked the length of Morningstar Boardwalk - which is about a mile - then went off road, so to speak. Being a creek, the land is prone to intermittent flooding punctuated by spells sufficiently dry as to allow for everything to turn into meadows and woodland, albeit meadows and woodland of a wild and uneven composition. We spent about thirty minutes making slow progress through the long grass, doing our best to avoid potholes while spotting birds, by which point the kid said he was exhausted, with some justification, and so we came home.

More recently, now that it's become a regular feature of our Sunday afternoon, we've stuck to the boardwalk, adding a couple of hundred yards each time before we turn back, so we're nearly at Wetmore where the trail dips under both the highway and the railroad. I can write railroad without it being an affectation because I live in America. The boy has theorised that we'll eventually make it to the Canadian border before we turn back, although hopefully he'll have moved out by that point, even if only to a retirement home.

After a couple of trips to the boardwalk, working up to a distance of about three miles, we switched to the land bridge at Phil Hardberger Park, mainly because they'd just finished building the thing and we wanted to see what it was like. It's essentially a field built across the top of a highway so as to allow deer and other critters to cross from one bit of park to another. Unfortunately, half of San Antonio had the same idea so it felt a bit like a cinematic exodus of some description, as though we were all going to see where the saucer had landed. Our first expedition to Phil Hardberger Park, some years before, was distinguished by our progress being momentarily halted by a massive snake crossing the path. It was about ten foot long, or something in the vicinity, and was taking its time. My wife still swears that it looked thoroughly inconvenienced by us, and I provisionally gave the snake the name of Snakey, for the sake of argument. Our first expedition to Phil Hardberger Park is therefore remembered as the time we met Snakey the snake, so this latest occasion was a bit underwhelming.

Last weekend we switched to Holbrook Road, which actual runs parallel to Salado Creek for a couple of miles. We parked by the Thai place on Rittiman, then walked down the feed road to Holbrook, mainly so we could look at the goats in the adjacent field. The male may be the biggest goat I've ever seen, and they were hanging out with a donkey on this occasion. Naturally this inspired the kid to one of his monologues - fun facts relating to goats, each one interspersed with a pause then let me see, what else is there? Most of it is stuff my wife and I already know on account of the fact that we both went to school, but occasionally he'll throw up something we hadn't heard before; plus it's nice that he's actually interested in something.

We pass the Black Swan Inn. 'Can you guess what happened there?' my wife asks.

I assume she's referring to the battle of Salado Creek which is commemorated and described by a stone memorial just on the other side of the inn's driveway, but I say nothing.

The kid doesn't know.

'That's where your dad and I got married.'

She means her first husband, obviously. I've seen the photos of the wedding, which occurred even before I owned a passport, let alone had any idea that I would end up living in Texas.

The kid mentions something about how swans are able to break a human arm.

'Here come the swan facts,' I say, but no-one hears me.

The boy tells us about swans for the next fifteen minutes. I don't really mind because the dispensation of information is what he enjoys most, even when we already knew what he's just told us; and I know he's begun to look forward to these Sunday outings, just as Danny Trejo promised; and because we know that one day we'll all be glad we did this, because we're glad that we're doing it right now.