Click for Calendar of Talks & Adventures with Amy
WILD DFW TALKS
Take a wild ride with author Amy Martin through some of her most fascinating material from Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth. Contact the author to arrange one for your group. Must be allowed to sell books (unless at a bookstore or venue that sells the book). Group minimums. Travel stipend requested for outside the four-county area. Honorariums appreciated.
General
A Deep Dive into North Texas Ecotone & its Natural Wonders
45-min Powerpoint plus 5 to 10-min Q&A, followed by book signing (1-hour slot). Suitable for advanced-training credit.
Amy Martin, author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth, will make you curious about what’s beneath your feet. Why is North Texas an epic ecotone? What is the Great Trinity Forest the easternmost example of? How do tilted layers of bedrock shape our three ecoregions, foster a plethora of soil types, and lead to our plant and wildlife diversity. And why did it tilt? Learn of places to experience these tenets firsthand from the book’s 25 hiking adventures. Enjoy astounding photography by skilled naturalists of hardwood bottomland forests and Eastern Cross Timbers, soaring limestone escarpments, lush wetlands, and rare remnants of Blackland and Fort Worth Prairies. Get to know a diverse community of volunteers working for nature.
Field, Forest & Home: The Wildlife of North Texas
25-min talk and reading plus 5 to 10 min Q&A, followed by book signing (45-min slot)
Enjoy a show of stunning photos from the book Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth, set to a talk by the author, Amy Martin. The photos, all taken by area naturalists, show an extraordinary intimacy with their subjects. Experience over a dozen birds, a half-dozen turtles, several reptiles and amphibians, a handful of mammals, one remarkable fish, and some surprisingly attractive insects and spiders. The quirky facts you’ll learn will make you the hit of any party conversation.
The Flora, Fauna, and Fantastic Nature of Wild DFW
45-min talk and reading plus 5 to 10 min Q&A, followed by book signing (1-hour slot)
North Texas nature is anything but average! The area has astounding diversity, frequently landing in the top 10 of iNaturalist competitions worldwide. Drawing from her popular book, Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth, learn from author Amy Martin how that diversity arises from our unique tilted layers of bedrock and discover the plants and animals that live here. Get to know the ecoregions that shape the area and why we serve as an integral ecotone linking east and west. Journey through the wonderfully wild areas of North Texas via incredible photos from the book. Meet the courageous volunteers who preserve these precious places and derive deep healing from them, a gift of nature available to us all.
The Nature We Call Home
45-min Powerpoint talk plus 5 to 10 min Q&A, followed by book signing (1-hour slot)
Blending poetic passages from the book Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth with her own profound experiences, and illustrated with the book’s astounding photographs, Amy Martin will inspire about the nature we call home. The passion of the prairie, the nurturing bottomland forest, the elusive Trinity River, the soaring escarpments, and the survivor Eastern Cross Timbers, Amy will bring insight into how to appreciate and explore our North Texas nature.
Never See North Texas Nature the Same Way Again
50-min Powerpoint plus 5 to 10-min Q&A, followed by book signing (1.15-hour slot)
Author and naturalist Amy Martin nearly died four years ago from a severely broken neck. She learned to walk again by hiking natural trails. Those hikes are an integral part of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth. Hear her inspiring story woven with rhapsodic passages from the book. Learn how a little knowledge about natural history and ecology can transform your perception of North Texas nature. Astounding color photos bring alive peak experiences from the 25 featured hiking adventures through hardwood bottomland forests and Eastern Cross Timbers, soaring limestone escarpments, lush wetlands, and rare remnants of Blackland and Fort Worth Prairies. Wild DFW is Martin’s way of facilitating others to find the healing power of nature and the natural wonder she felt as a child. Get to know a diverse community of volunteers working for nature.
Specialty
The Trinity River: The Watery Tie that Binds North Texas
30-min Powerpoint plus 5-min Q&A, followed by book signing (45-minute slot)Tour the Trinity River’s four forks and how they shape the land, the reservoirs and nature attractions they host, and the Trinity River Paddling Trail. 30 minutes. There is only one river in North Texas: the Trinity. Once rejected and forgotten, paid attention to only when it floods, the Trinity is transforming from a place of refuse to refuge. First, a short romp through our river follies, like when the West Fork was called River of Death and the insane attempts to turn it into a barge canal. Then we’ll take a tour of the Trinity’s four forks—Clear, East, Elm, and West—exploring each one’s unique characteristics, plus the nature preserves and attractions they are home to. This riverine network is home to the Trinity River Paddling Trail, a National Park Service recreation trail with over 120 miles of floating fun.
The Trinity River: Why it’s Home to Natural Wonders and Not a Canal
30-min Powerpoint plus 5-min Q&A, followed by book signing (45-minute slot)
Imagine a concrete canal lined with industrial activity from north of downtown Dallas all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Such was to be the Trinity River’s fate until Republican Alan Steelman won his dark-horse race for Congress. He took big risks opposing a boondoggle project backed by every political power in the state. Together with an upstart anti-canal coalition, led by noted Texas environmentalist Ned Fritz, they took on an ultra-powerful and well-monied canal lobby. Hear his story of how they won against all odds and the river was saved. Find out about the parks, preserves, and paddling trail that the Trinity now boasts from Amy Martin, author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth and biographer of Ned Fritz.
The Moon & Nature at Night
45-min Powerpoint plus 5 to 10-min Q&A, followed by book signing (1-hour slot)
Known by many as the Moonlady, Amy Martin, author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth, merges fascinating nocturnal nature insights from the book with her deep knowledge of the Moon. After this talk, you’ll be a pro-level Moon watcher able to predict where it will be at any time. Understand synchrony which creates tides and causes us to only see one side of the Moon. Discover how the Moon led to life on Earth and stabilized the planet to enable human life to evolve. Discover how darkness and the Moon impact plants and wildlife, especially in urban areas. Learn how to live in tune with the Moon with gardening based on the lunar phases.
The Moon & Nature at Night
15-min interactive talk followed by 1-hour night walk
Take a walk in the Full Moon light with Amy Martin, the Moonlady. After a poetic overview of the Moon, an audience-involving demonstration will explain the lunar phases and why we only see one side of the Moon, making you a pro-level Moon watcher, able to predict where the Moon will be at any time. Then off on a night hike with breaks for short raps on synchrony and the formation of life on Earth, nocturnal wildlife and how they use the Moon and nighttime for safety and adaptation. Includes contemplative time on the nature of moonlight, plus plenty of Moon-shadow dancing, Moon song singing, and howling at the Moon.
Writer’s Process to Create a Nature Book
40-min talk and reading plus 10 min Q&A, followed by book signing (1-hour slot)
How did a former music and comedy critic end up writing a popular nature book? Amy Martin’s 40-year journalism career was kicked off by an award from environmentalist Ned Fritz for a nuclear power series but took a turn after a chance phone call from jazz musician Pat Metheny. After a 20-year career as an entertainment critic—ultimately specializing in improv, magic, and cirque—took a toll on her health, Martin turned the healing she found in nature into a second career as a North Texas Wild columnist for GreenSourceDFW. Then she was recommended to Timber Press to pen Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth as part of their Wild series on urban nature. The highly praised and wildly successful has sold over 6000 copies. Hear insight about the research and writing process, the essential tools of the trade writing about the outdoors, and how writing the book is only a third of the work, with editing/proofreading and marketing as the other two-thirds. Martin will read some of her prosaic passages from Wild DFW and discuss how a book called Obsidian is where she’s going next.
Regionals
Denton County Nature Tourism
40-min Powerpoint plus 10-min Q&A, followed by book signing (50-min slot)
Denton, Lewisville, and the upper metroplex are a big part of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth. The author, Amy Martin, will share material from the book about how the Elm Fork is the dominant branch of the Trinity. Learn of Lewisville’s pivotal location at the edge of Blackland Prairie and Eastern Cross Timbers. Explore four epic nature spaces featured in the book ranging from 700 to 3777 acres, located in or near Lewisville: Bob Jones Nature Center (Southlake), Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center (Denton), Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area, and Ray Roberts Lake State Park (NE of Denton).
The Great Trinity Forest
30-min talk plus 5-min Q&A, followed by book signing (45-min slot)
In the early ’70s, a business and political crony campaign to straighten and channelize the Trinity River from east Fort Worth to the Gulf of Mexico included plans to level much of the immense woods between I-45 and US 175. Ned Fritz, who was leading the anti-canal movement in North Texas, knew that the forest needed to be named in order for people to care about it. The name that arose among activists, attributed to Campbell Reed of First Unitarian, was the Great Trinity Forest (GTF). The 6000 acres of urban bottomland hardwood forest is the largest swath of such an ecosystem in the nation. Learn about the GTF’s ecology and natural treasures. Discover where to hike it, from refined and paved trails to utterly wild hikes. Find out about Ned’s efforts to familiarize people with the GTF by leading annual March walks to view the Texas Buckeye blooms, and how these were carried on by Jim Flood and continue today via Kristi Kerr Leonard on the officially named Ned and Genie Fritz Texas Buckeye Trails. Understand the ongoing threats to the GTF’s autonomy and speculate on why it’s never been officially named or defined.
The Southwest Escarpment
20-min talk plus 5-min Q&A, followed by book signing (30-min slot)
An Austin Chalk escarpment slices across the southwest corner of Dallas County, so epic it forces the West Fork of the Trinity to divert from a diagonal flow to nearly east-west. It gave Mountain Creek, impounded to create Joe Pool Lake, its name. Learn how this 65-million-year-old limestone gives way to softer Eagle Ford Shale, creating the preserves impressive vistas, and how historic environmentalist Ned Fritz was the first to highlight the area.
Wild White Rock
15-min Powerpoint plus 5-min Q&A, followed by book signing (30-min slot)
Go beyond the historic structures, marinas, and popular hike/bike trail of White Rock Lake Park. Discover its wild side. Learn it’s birdwatching hotspots such as the Old Fish Hatchery woods, the northwest corner boardwalk where cormorants congregate, the Sunset Bay estuary, and spillway with its prime lookout platform. Walk along the wet woods of Dixon Branch where bald eagles frequently fly or take a dawn seat at the Stone Tables and watch the owls hunt. Take a dawn or sunset seat off the creek trail north of Mockingbird and listen to wildlife explore the swampy forest. Enjoy sunset from benches on the east side or watch the Moon rise over the water from docks on the west side. Discover where the spring is and why bird photographers flock to the Bath House pollinator garden.
Wild Waters of the East
20-min Powerpoint plus 5-min Q&A, followed by book signing (30-min slot)
The park surrounding White Rock Lake is known for its historic structures, marinas, and popular hike/bike trail. Equal to those treasures are its wild areas: the wet woods of Dixon Branch and north of Mockingbird, the Old Fish Hatchery and spillway birdwatching areas, quiet bays and backwaters where waterfowl nestle, and westside Moon-watching docks. But to the north in Garland is Spring Creek Forest Preserve with its massive trees, wildflower prairies, and rich riparian corridor. To the south in Pleasant Grove is Piedmont Ridge, a limestone escarpment with some of the county’s highest altitude and scenic views, rich in pioneer and Native American heritage along Oak Creek.
ate Park (Pilot Point), and Lewisville’s own Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area. A a hots of quality smaller nature parks nearby.
A Wild Ride Through LLELA’s Ecosystems
20-min talk and reading plus 10 to 15 min Q&A, followed by book signing (1-hour slot)
Amy Martin, author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth, will share thoughts from her book about how Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area (LLELA) straddles the Eastern Cross Timbers and Blackland Prairie ecosystem and features a major riparian corridor along the Elm Fork of the Trinity. She’ll share which trails and the best times of year to experience these ecosystems. Include a special reading of Richard’s Wild Ride, a funny white-knuckle romp through prairie and riparian restorations edited from the book due to length constraints. Sponsored by Friends of LLELA https://www.friendsofllela.org/.