Bringing It All Back Home

Having survived the crowds last week at the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park on our Great Western Swing Scouting Trip, I decided to take a walk around my own backyard today.
In my case, the backyard is the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Thanks taxpayers. The great thing about hitting the trails in the park on a Wednesday is that there’s virtually no one else around. You get to see what a park is all about—a place for the animals, not the humans. I walked nearly two miles on the first trail before I saw two people coming the other way, deep in discussion about eating fat and why it’s good for you. I wanted to tell them to check that theory with the chickadees who were also deep in their discussion—probably about the quality of sunflower seeds this year.
Further along the trail I crossed over a stream (okay, a tiny creek) that I’ve seen many time. Only now it was crowded with fish. As a fly fisher I should be able to identify these critters. All I know is they were not trout. I think they were black-nosed dace. There were hundreds of them. I realized they were probably always there, except when there was heavy traffic on the trail.
As I neared where I planned to take a shortcut and head for home, I looked into the remnants of the Ohio-Erie canal. I realized the moss-covered bumps on the logs were really turtles. From one spot I counted 56 of various sizes from ravioli to basketball. All uniformly green with duckweed on their heads, necks and backs. For five minutes or so I discussed choosing vice presidential running mates with the turtles. You can do that sort of thing when no one else is around.
Heading up the steep slope that would lead me back to civilization, I spooked three white-tail deer that had bedded down for the day. The buck, still in velvet, was not happy. He snorted and pawed the ground, just to let me know who was boss of this patch.
Somehow the hill had gotten steeper than I remembered and during my second rest stop, Blue Jays rousted a Cooper’s Hawk that flew straight at me, eye level. It was probably my imagination, but I swear I felt the wind from its wings as it passed overhead.
There’s a reason national parks carry that designation. They all have something to offer you’ll find no place else. Ours might not have mile-deep canyons or soaring hoodoos. We have just basic peace and tranquility, especially on a Wednesday morning.