Sorely lacking in my new digs is any kind of wooded place where I can let the hound meander. One of the things I love about Kalamazoo is the abundance of places where you can escape the strip malls and concrete and be completely surrounded by nature, yet without having to drive an hour to get there. Heck, without having to drive at all. Technically, you're not supposed to have your dog off-leash at either of these places. But there seems to be a tacit understanding among dog owners that sometimes those critters just need to be at large, and 90% of the non-dog-having crowd out there on the trails seems to acquiesce*.
Kleinstuck, behind the YWCA on Maple Street, is a 3/4 mile loop (plus some other trails) that surrounds a bog, and thanks to the recent efforts of local volunteers it is being reclaimed from invasive species. The vines that were swarming the trees have been cut back so you can see the swamp, which hosts noisy frog parties in the evenings. A sweet, sun-baked, heady resiny fragrance emanates from the pine grove on one stretch of the trail, particularly in the afternoon. On a hot summer day, it's always about five degrees cooler back under the shade of those gnarled old trees.
Asylum is -- well, to be honest I don't know what it used to be, other than that whatever it was is being steadily reclaimed by nature. A network of cement roads crisscrosses the preserve, all of them infiltrated by persistent roots and weeds that shove themselves unceremoniously up through the cracks. There's a lake and a stream and a swamp and glades and woods and a huge field that brims with ticks and wildflowers in the summer. There's a tree that juts out over one of the fields just like the prow of a ship, and this has long been my favorite place to watch -- and feel -- the seasons change.
The hound loves it all. These are his places to socialize. I love to watch him lose himself in the tall grass and make these clumsy, dolphin-like leaps over the heads of the Queen Anne's Lace to get his bearings, or lose some doggie friend by dodging and weaving between the trees, wherever his low center of gravity will take him. We met Molly, a compact and energetic black lab mix, and her dad. There was the snarky Pabliano, a beagle, and his verbose mom who always wanted to engage me in conversation while her dog bared his teeth at my oh-so-sociable hound. Then there was the lady with the long, wavy grey hair and crooked teeth whose golden retriever would take you out at the knees out of sheer exuberance.
What makes these places so special is that they're such an unexpected sanctum, which means that there may well be some similar place down here that we have yet to discover. Still, I'm already nostalgic for the cool tinge that the end of August brings in my home state, and I miss my near-daily walk in the woods.
* people have been ticketed in the past for walking pets off-leash in Asylum Woods. Do so at your own risk.
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