The trail is mostly unshaded, although often small trees are all about. I saw a gorgeous bluebird, with a rich body color, and even deeper blue wings. This is the time of year when butterflies flit everywhere. I saw large ones--tiger swallowtails and black swallowtails--and many different kinds of small ones.
Out in the lake, white and blue herons waded in the shallows. Overhead, thunderhead clouds reminded of rain, but delivered none. I enjoyed timing each half mile with my watch, to see what pace I could maintain. I did the entire five miles in one hundred minutes, a fairly leisurely 3.1 miles an hour. I had slept in far too long this morning, as the last vestiges of that old cold fade away. It was so restorative to wander alone down the trail, encountering only a few horse riders.
Now that I see that this five mile walk is so easy to accomplish, I'll plan a Saturday or Sunday in which I do a ten mile roundtrip. I have this mental image of setting out at six a.m., having breakfast at Collin Park at nine, and then being back in pocket by ten a.m., with a Saturday still ahead of me. But today I'm just glad to have finished the five miles. My wife picked me up a few minutes after four, and drove us home--very kind of her to "shuttle" this way. We saw a kestrel and two domesticated guinea hens on the drive home. I feel rested in my exhaustion.
