There is a natural gem in northwest Fort Worth, surrounded by developed urban life. The Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge offers over 3600 acres of natural forest, prairie, and wetlands that take you back to what the Dallas-Fort Worth area originally looked and felt like in the early twentieth century. The refuge is one of the country's largest urban nature centers and offers many activities, including hiking, boating, fishing, bison viewing, and educational opportunities.
Cross Timbers Trail
I decided to spend a day late in November to see what the trails offered. My little adventure started early in the morning with a crisp winter chill and full sunshine. The day's first activity was a hike through the ancient cross timbers, an area now certified as the only old-growth forest in the entire state of Texas according to the Old-Growth Forest Network. Though the trees may not be massively wide and tall like the redwoods, these skinny post oaks grow in fascinating contorted and knobby ways.
The three-and-a-half mile hike leads you along a stretch of the Trinity River, where waterfowl can easily be seen at this time of year. This stretch of river is famous amongst fishermen in boats and kayaks. The narrow channel offers a peaceful and intimate space on the water with giant cottonwoods and understory trees adding shadows that cover overhead. The water's edge is filled with grasses and woody vegetation, great for fish habitat, and the surrounding area is blocked from heavy wind, excessive human traffic, and noise.
The path turns away from the river channel into a loop trail taking you through dense post oak thickets and patches of grassland meadows. By winter, the understory vegetation is dormant, and the leaves have begun to fall, with many red and yellow leaves still remaining high up in the canopy. The loss of vegetation offers views of rows and rows of scattered mature trees surrounded by a dense blanket of thick multi-colored leaves.
These forested areas turn to dense, brambled, and vegetated thickets on the edges of tall grass meadows. Make sure you hike with your ears and eyes peeled. These edges offer a diversity of wildlife. I had no problem finding angry squirrels wagging their tails, white pelicans flying high above, and deer with a strange curiosity not found in traditional hunting grounds. At one point, I heard a few deer within a very dark patch of wooded area just off trail. I sat under the shadow of a large oak and waited. One, then two, then three deer made themselves known as they walked within ten yards of my location, smelling and bobbing their heads up and down in my direction.
Canyon Ridge Trail
If you want a hilly hike with fantastic lookout points, Canyon Ridge is for you. This trail begins off of Lake Worth. The trailhead was hard to find but a small parking area with several picnic tables is your best clue. The trail itself is narrow and intimate with dense forest and brambles encasing you. If you get nervous about tight vegetative spaces, don't worry; the trail begins to open up quickly. As you ascend, you see more of the lake through scattered trees downhill. Before you know it, you are hiking atop the hills where the environment changes from dense woods to exposed, dry, short grass pieces of land with sparse low growing trees and many yuccas. The views atop are magnificent. You can see Lake Worth and Greer Island and the immediate surrounding areas of thick undeveloped wetland forests stretching for miles.
Texas isn't known for its fall foliage but if you can find the right place at precisely the right time of year, you can get some good views of dense yellows and reds amongst rolling hills. Canyon Ridge in late November is one of those places.
Hardwicke Interpretive Visitor Center
Before you head out, visit the Hardwicke Interpretive Visitor Center. This visitor center sits high on one of the hills and presents living animal species. Most, if not all of the animals, like the caracara and red-tailed hawk, are there due to injuries that keep them from living on their own. The center has several species of wasps and an opossum. Inside the center, you'll find a viewing window that looks out onto a bird-loving courtyard with common plants like Turk's Cap growing.
After resting from the cold at the center and having a snack, I was tired and all hiked out. I wasn't quite ready to leave, so I drove through the refuge one last time. While driving, I caught glimpses of the wetlands and several big bucks, one of which I pulled up next to and rolled my window down a few inches so we could stare at one another.
Though it was a short day, I visited parts of the park I'd never seen. I'll definitely be back in spring when the bison return from their winter location.
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