Tuesday Adventures: Battelle Darby Creek Metro Park

I had to put off my original destination for today due to... this will be shocking... rain! That place involves water, and I was still really wanting to see water, so I picked someplace a little closer to home that still involved water.

Tip of the day! If you are going to be visiting someplace in the summer that involves water and woods, wear bug spray. One would think I'd know this by now. Seems very obvious. This mistake has been made before. Apparently I am out of practice, as I haven't gone on Tuesday Adventures in two years. Today was Battelle Darby Creek Metro Park in Galloway, a suburb that's west of Columbus.

So aside from now being a giant walking mosquito bite (one is on my ear. that is not okay.), and there being a few sprinkles and lots of clouds, today was awesome. Walking in the woods feels like home. This place had a lot more insects than I'm used to. I saw the largest dragonfly I've ever seen in my life. Had it not been absolutely terrifying, it was almost beautiful. Butterflies and beetles, also tons of birds and frogs that would jump away as you walked by. The wind was blowing since it was borderline stormy, so the trees were dancing. The sound of the wind in the leaves is one of my favorite sounds on earth. It was such a beautiful reminder of how alive everything is. It just feels easier to breathe. Your head is clear. You notice tiny little miraculous things. There's magic in the woods.

I'd like to share some of the magic I found with you. These photos are in order of the way that I took them. Sidenote: I've been asked in the past what I use to process my photos. All of these were processed using Adobe Lightroom. It's an amazing program. I like to process my photos because the images that I see on my camera almost never match the things that I see, the things that I remember, the things that I carry in my head. My photos reflect the way that I see, take in, and remember the world.

Let's go for a walk in the woods :)

Few things excite me more than the path ahead in a place I have never been.

First view of Battelle Darby Creek. It's very high for this time of year, so the water was active and rushing. Anyone wanting to visit here, I took the Cobshell Trail to reach the creek quickly.

The woods were pretty dark in some places. Random gray clouds were rolling through, so there was a mixture of occasional sun and totally spooky moments.

Leaves dancing in the wind. Can you hear them?

(this photo was taken amidst a colossal mosquito attack.)

These leaves had raindrops on their edges. Nowhere else but the edges. The photo really doesn't do it justice, but I tried ;)

Traveled through a field filled with little flowers and little insects. And some big insects. Could have done without the big insects.

Everything is so alive. There's moss and plants and things sprouting up everywhere.

An old railroad bridge! Of course two teenage girls who had climbed to the top of it to hang out scared the bejesus out of me by yelling, "Hey boo! Whatchu up to?" They were just sitting up there, way too close to the edge, dangling their feet off the sides. The older I get, it seems that everyone else is super annoyed by teenagers. While I can't argue that some can be annoying in certain situations, they are just trying to figure stuff out. I wonder what those girls were talking about up there.

This was when I started to book it back because thunder was rumbling, I had no clue where I was, and the only logical plan was to walk as fast as I could back the way I came. At least the mosquitoes had a tricky time keeping up.

I almost didn't stop here. This is called the Streamside Classroom. On my way in, it was filled with kids from a preschool or summer camp. It made me smile and remember my summers working with school-age kids at a day camp type thing. I could see the kids were in the creek, shrieking and laughing and talking excitedly. On the way back, it was empty. Although the clouds were looking mighty threatening, I stopped. There was a stairway into the creek. It was so nostalgic somehow. Like childhood summers spent swimming in lakes.

This was the other place you could enter the creek, off to the left of the stairway to heaven. I want to go back, with some type of industrial-grade bug spray. So I can sit, take it all in, and just be.

Why did I ever stop doing Tuesday Adventures? Today was a very good day.