Talks & Walks Calendar

Deep Dive into North Texas Ecotone & its Natural Wonders

Sept 4 Wed at 11 am to 1 pm

North Haven Gardens
7700 Northaven Rd, Dallas, TX 75230

Sponsor: Garden Masters

Why is North Texas an epic ecotone and how is that special? 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? From the ancient inland ocean and melting ice caps that forged North Texas, to the goliath creeks and many forks of the Trinity, get clear on how water shapes our local landscape.

Discover places to experience these tenets firsthand. 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.

Get your rock nerd on! From the geology/paleontology chapter of Amy Martin’s Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth.

Sept. 7 Sat, 11 am to noon

Dallas Public Library – J. Erik Jonsson Central Library
1515 Young St, Dallas, TX 75201

by Amy Martin & Kristi Kerr Leonard, Ned Fritz Legacy 

Lawyer and activist Ned Fritz was responsible for three of Texas most important nature groups, a savior of East Texas forests by establishing five wilderness areas and the Big Thicket National Preserve, and the leader who kept the Trinity River from being straightened and turned into an industrial barge canal. He was also the first in the state, and possibly the nation, to garner huge news headlines in defense of native plants. For this he was given the Charles Leonard Weddle Memorial Award in 2000 from Native Plant Society of Texas. 

Ned and Genie Fritz had purchased land off Bachman Creek in 1952 and built a home. He kept the yard wild like a prairie. But as the street gentrified, not all neighbors approved. In 1970, the city weed inspector was called and called and called. Each time, Ned beat it back on technicalities. The city threatened to take him to court. What a mistake that was. The trial, called Great Weed War, gained nationwide press. Learn how he won.

Presented by the team creating Ned Fritz Legacy, a biographical website about Ned. 

The Moon & Nature at Night

Mansfield Garden Club, meeting at Chris W. Burkett Service Center, 620 S. Wisteria St, Mansfield

Known by many as the Moonlady, Amy Martin, author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth [Wild-DFW.com], 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 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.

A journalist and writer for over 40 years, Amy Martin is also the author of Itchy Business: How to Treat the Poison Ivy and Poison Oak Rash, Prevent Exposure and Eradicate the Plant (Itchy.biz). She is senior features writer for Green Source DFW (GreenSourceDFW.org). A current project is Ned Fritz Legacy (NedFritz.com), a biographical website of Ned Fritz, Texas’ most famous environmentalist. Find her writings at Moonlady.com.

Art of white cats leaping at the Moon by Hiromi Nishizaka. 

See less

Sept 11 Wed – 5:30 to 7:30 pm

Robson Ranch Clubhouse
9448 Ed Robson Circle, Denton, TX 76207

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.

Joining us will be Scott Keister, master birder and president of Friends of Lake Lewisville Environmental Learning Area to answer any questions about LLELA and birding.

To attend, become a member of OLLI — highly recommended! Contact: olli@unt.edu, More on OLLI: https://olli.unt.edu/index.html

Sustainable Horizons Does Spring Creek Forest Preserve: Ranger Unit

Sept 12 Thurs from 11 am to 1:30 pm
Halff Park Trailhead, 4695 Ranger Drive, Garland TX 75040

Are you a homeschooling family or considering it? Join Sustainable Horizons, a dynamic homeschoolers co-op, as we experience Spring Creek Forest Preserve in north Garland.

We’ll explore the wild Ranger Unit of the preserve, going through deep forest with immense trees on a trail that often swings very close to Spring Creek. If we’re lucky, we’ll find the route down into the creek. This is a very quiet and untamed section of the preserve.

Text Marcie at 214-545-8154 to join.

Spring Creek Forest Preserve is one of the 25 adventure chapters in Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth https://Wild-DFW.com/ (Timber Press).

Why is North Texas an epic ecotone and how is that special? 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? From the ancient inland ocean and melting ice caps that forged North Texas, to the goliath creeks and many forks of the Trinity, get clear on how water shapes our local landscape.

Discover places to experience these tenets firsthand. 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.

Get your rock nerd on! From the geology/paleontology chapter of Amy Martin’s Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth.

Blackland Prairie Chapter

Sept 19 Thursday at 5 to 7pm

Book reading and community chat

Barnes & Noble Allen store grand opening

Watters Creek Village, 988 Village Green Dr, Allen, TX 75013

Come hang out at Barnes & Noble Allen’s cool intimate space in this new store on its first day of opening. I’ll read passages from the book and share cool facts from the book’s field guide. We’ll discuss great places in DFW for fall wildflowers and foliage. Purchase a Wild DFW and get it signed. Special guest Bob Mione from Connemara Meadow, just a couple miles from the store, will speak on their amazing prairie restoration project.

Goat Island Preserve: Hike North Texas with Dallas Sierra Club & Wild DFW

Sept. 21 Sat – 9:30 am to 2 pm

Goat Island Preserve
2800 Post Oak Rd, Hutchins, TX 75141

Enjoy long-distance hikes through fascinating large preserves and parks — without leaving DFW. Dallas Sierra Club joins with Amy Martin, author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth, to offer quarterly hikes on trails as wild as North Texas has to offer. Explore these places with naturalists and others that know them the best.

Fall offering: Goat Island Preserve, part of the Dallas County Open Space system. A gorgeous slice of Great Trinity Forest fronting the Trinity River. Bottomland forest with some huge trees. Hike route will include birdwatching trails on Goat Island itself and a hike down Joe’s Riverside Trail to a picnic area for a break, and then further down the trail, and back up the interior trail. Hike length: apx 7 miles

Points-of-interest naturalist mini-breaks: birdwatching across from Southside Water Treatment Plant… multiple river overlooks… viewing and history of Lock & Dam #2.

We hope these hikes will help Dallas and surroundings develop a mindset of embracing its nature with a deep sense of pride. From that will arise more trails and greater land preservation.

Donations for hike leader thank-you gifts and park/preserve donations appreciated: TBA.

Wild DFWs available for purchase. Book info.

Hike North Texas Specifics
<> Typical hike length: 4 to 7 miles. Options for additional miles provided.
<> Typical hike time: 4 to 5 hours.

This will be unfettered nature, so keep in mind:
<> Terrain will frequently be rugged with some elevation changes.
<> Trails narrow will always be dirt and usually narrow, but with some easy sections.
<> While we’ll go at a good pace, there will be stops for exceptional naturalist points of interest.

Come prepared:
<> Wear closed-toed shoes and long pants.
<> Pack multiple water bottles (24 oz. recommended.
<> Bring a bag lunch, snack bars and such for our mid-way break.

Wild DFW: Questas, Cross Timbers & More

October 5 Sat. — 10 am to noon

Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve

5201 Bowman Springs Rd. Arlington TX 76017

https ://www.facebook.com/ FriendsofSCNP/

Come re-create the adventure chapter on Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve from Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth (https://Wild-DFW.com/) with members of Friends of Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve. You’ve read about Eastern Cross Timbers in Wild DFW, Now experience the finest remnant of it in North Texas. The geology chapter of Wild DFW talks extensively about how our tilted layers of bedrock shape the landscape. Now walk that as you explore a cuesta limestone formation. The prairies will be in flower. The blackjack and post oak leaves will be fresh and luminous green. Warm weather will have all the lizards skittering about. Songbirds will be fledging their young. What a grand time we will have! 

A journalist and writer for over 40 years, Amy Martin is the author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth (Wild-DFW.com), and Itchy Business: How to Treat the Poison Ivy and Poison Oak Rash, Prevent Exposure and Eradicate the Plant (Itchy.biz). She is currently senior features writer for Green Source DFW (GreenSourceDFW.org). Her current project is Ned Fritz Legacy (NedFritz.com), a biographical website of Ned Fritz, Texas’ most famous environmentalist. For twelve years, she managed wildlife habitat rehabilitation on a private nature preserve in northeast Texas, including converting fifteen acres of pasture into tallgrass prairie. Find her writings at Moonlady.com.

Friday, October 18 at 7 to 9 pm

Twelve Hills Nature Center https://twelvehills.org/
817 Mary Cliff Rd, Dallas, TX 75208

Take a walk in the Full Moon light with Amy Martin, the Moonlady and author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth. We’ll recreate the hike from Wild DFWs’s After Dark chapter with Marcie Haley and Kristi Kerr Leonard.

But first, let’s talk poetic about Moon, how the lunar phases affect our mood and shape wildlife’s activities. Attendees acting as the Sun, Earth, and Moon, attendees will embody the lunar phases to show how they’re created as Amy explains the pertinent points of each one. Plus why life on Earth owes its existence to the Moon and synchrony.

Then off on a night hike with breaks for discussing the qualities of moonlight and why the Moon moves us so deeply. Plus plenty of Moon-shadow dancing and Moon song singing. Bring ultraviolet lights to see lichens glow!

Twelve Hills Nature Center

October 26 Saturday – 1 to 3 pm

North Haven Gardens, 7700 Northaven Rd, Dallas, TX 75230

A breathless and breathtaking photo-filled tour of 25 top nature spaces in North Texas from Amy Martin’s popular Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth (Timber Press).

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. Get to know a diverse community of volunteers working for nature.

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. 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.

In honor of Native Plant Month, Martin will precede the talk with a few minutes of her favorite native plants from the book’s field guide and share which of the 25 places in the book’s hiking adventure section has the richest diversity of native plants.

Photo of wildflowers in Oak Point Nature Preserve in Plano by Carol Clark.

Monday, November 4, 2024 — 10 am to noon

AARP 3880 Casa Linda Dallas

Casa View Assembly of God

9949 Ferguson Road, Dallas, TX 75228

Wild DFW: The Nature We Call Home

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 and how it helped her heal from a near-fatal spinal injury. 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.

Piedmont Ridge: Hike North Texas with Dallas Sierra Club & Wild DFW

Nov 9 Sat – 9:30 am to 2 pm

2725 N Jim Miller Rd Dallas TX 75217 (softball field parking lot) Google maps

Enjoy long-distance hikes through fascinating large preserves and parks — without leaving DFW. Dallas Sierra Club joins with Amy Martin, author of Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth, to offer quarterly hikes on trails as wild as North Texas has to offer. Explore these places with naturalists and others that know them the best. 

First up: Piedmont Ridge, part of the Dallas parks system and the northernmost section of the Great Trinity Forest. Best place to experience fall foliage in Dallas. We’ll hike every trail there. Two sections of soaring limestone escarpment with unique upland woods (Scyene/Lacywood Overlook Trails and Piedmont Ridge Trail), connected by a long stretch of lush bottomland forest (JJ Beeman Trail). About 5 miles.

Points-of-interest naturalist mini-breaks: 4 overlooks that afford views of the Great Trinity Forest (in autumn colors!), downtown and across the county to Cedar Hill… historic Comanche eastern red cedar lodgepole woods… historic settlers’ black walnut grove… ridgetop Blackland Prairie.

We hope these hikes will help Dallas and surroundings develop a mindset of embracing its nature with a deep sense of pride. From that will arise more trails and greater land preservation. You don’t have to travel far for great nature.

Donations for hike leader thank-you gifts and park/preserve donations appreciated: TBA. 

Wild DFWs available for purchase. Book info.

Hike North Texas Specifics

• Typical hike length: 4 to 7 miles. Options for additional miles provided. 
• Typical hike time: 4 to 5 hours.

This will be unfettered nature, so keep in mind: 

• Terrain will frequently be rugged with some elevation changes. 
• Trails narrow will always be dirt and usually narrow, but with some easy sections.  
• While we’ll go at a good pace, there will be stops for exceptional naturalist points of interest. 

Come prepared: 

• Wear closed-toed shoes and long pants. 
• Pack multiple water bottles (24 oz. recommended.
• Bring a bag lunch, snack bars and such for our mid-way break. 

Lawyer and activist Ned Fritz was responsible for three of Texas most important nature groups, a savior of East Texas forests by establishing five wilderness areas and the Big Thicket National Preserve, and the leader who kept the Trinity River from being straightened and turned into an industrial barge canal.

He was also the first in the state, and possibly the nation, to garner huge news headlines in defense of native plants. For this he was given the Charles Leonard Weddle Memorial Award in 2000 from Native Plant Society of Texas.

Ned and Genie Fritz had purchased land off Bachman Creek in 1952 and built a home. He kept the yard wild like a prairie. But as the street gentrified, not all neighbors approved. In 1970, the city weed inspector was called and called and called. Each time, Ned beat it back on technicalities. The city threatened to take him to court. What a mistake that was. The trial, called Great Weed War, gained nationwide press. Learn how he won.

Presented by the team creating Ned Fritz Legacy, a biographical website about Ned.

Texas Woman’s University, Ann Stuart Science Complex (ASSC) Room 259. Park along Old Main Circle (employee parking) on the west side of the building or in any other nearby lot.

More about the host: Trinity Forks chapter Native Plant Society of Texas  

Trinity Forks