When Lindsey and her mom went to Sante Fe in 2017 the trip didn't really register for me beforehand. That year I was caught up in the Switch madness and I spent most of the time she was gone playing Mario Rabbids with Roscoe by my side. I mostly wasted the time, and didn't make much of it.
When they planned the same trip for 2018 I had a different set of priorities. Lindsey was just barely pregnant when she left, and I knew deep down it might be the last time I was completely alone again for a long time. All of early 2018 I spent my time getting settled in our new house, either by acting on plans I made in late 2017 or by making new ones, but I wanted her trip to be a time when I got done with the plans I had left over from 2017 so they wouldn't stay on the shelf for years. So I hung some pictures that we bought when we lived in Laurel Lane, and I even continued the legacy of the 2017 trip by playing the newly released Mario Rabbids DLC with Roscoe by my side the first night she was gone. But my attention soon shifted to digging into my local community in a way I hadn't done since we first moved down in 2012.
Suddenly I had a new obsession- the search for shade. In our old neighborhood there was a way to walk part of it I called "the shade path" where houses and grown up trees mostly provided shade. Our new neighborhood provided very little of that and so I wanted to find a new place where we could walk in mostly shade like we used to in Odessa towards the end of our time there.
I started off checking out the nearby parks to the house with Luna on a leash to see if I could find one like Odessa had. First we went to Devine Lake Park nearby but that felt weird. It was closer to the old house than the new one, and even though it provided shade it wasn't so much to make it the answer. Plus the place felt like somewhere we should have gone to when Xena was alive as it was dog friendly and near the old house. Going to a dry lake with one dog just wasn't fun.
Next up was a dog park I found on Ronald Reagan. Turned out to be more a bar than a park, you had to buy a beer to get in and the area for the dogs wasn't big. Luna ended up abandoning me the entire time I was there so she had fun, but it wasn't a place to walk or go back to often.
After that was the Williamson County park I have played disk golf at years ago. Here I found something really cool- two awesome hiking trails that took you really out into nature. The one inside the park was mostly shaded and somewhat fit what I was going for, and the larger trail became an inspirational goal that I eventually came back to with her on a cooler day later in 2018. Also I found a water park and all sorts of facilities that a young boy would enjoy. I started a long relationship with that park that day, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.
Desperate that I hadn't found what I wanted and time was running out, at the end of the week I just got on Google Maps and looked around for areas with lots of trees nearby. I checked out office parks and retail areas, but none seemed to work well. Finally I find an older neighborhood with plenty of trees near the public library. When we went it turned out that there was a path from the library parking lot into this neighborhood, and so me and Luna went and walked there for a while. It had a lot of what I wanted- it had so many trees it was shaded even in the late morning and it all had a sidewalk. Yet walking in other people's neighborhood was awkward, it wasn't that close and so I have only been back once since then.
Finally on a whim I drove into the neighborhood across the highway from our house and in that neighborhood I found a small park that seemed like one of those HOA parks but without the signs that no one could enter. In this parks I discovered a short but shaded loop that blocked 90% of the sun by 5pm in a day. Though it wasn't perfect this became my answer, and I called it shade park.
I have been back to shade park many times since then, taking Luna for short walks or taking Finn for a moment in between physical therapy and day care. Lindsey doesn't find it really satisfying and if I am honest neither do I, but I think part of the appeal is it was the biggest victory I got when I went searching for shade that week. I will always associate it with that first positive memory when I found it.
As for the week, eventually it was over and Lindsey came back with stories and pictures related to those stories of the last great adventure she had before becoming a mom. I mostly stayed silent about the last great adventure Luna and I had exploring the area around our new house, content to let it be a good memory. Eventually bits and pieces came out as we went back to the places I discovered, and a week ago we took Finn and Luna for a walk on that Williamson Country trail for the first time as I dreamed about when I discovered it.
But mostly I remember the week for the bonding time with Luna and Roscoe, and the chance to live based on my priorities 100% one last time. It had a lasting effect that in a way becomes the last really defining memory of my life before being a father. In a search for shade from the sun I found a proper way to sunset my youth, and for that I will always be grateful.
When they planned the same trip for 2018 I had a different set of priorities. Lindsey was just barely pregnant when she left, and I knew deep down it might be the last time I was completely alone again for a long time. All of early 2018 I spent my time getting settled in our new house, either by acting on plans I made in late 2017 or by making new ones, but I wanted her trip to be a time when I got done with the plans I had left over from 2017 so they wouldn't stay on the shelf for years. So I hung some pictures that we bought when we lived in Laurel Lane, and I even continued the legacy of the 2017 trip by playing the newly released Mario Rabbids DLC with Roscoe by my side the first night she was gone. But my attention soon shifted to digging into my local community in a way I hadn't done since we first moved down in 2012.
Suddenly I had a new obsession- the search for shade. In our old neighborhood there was a way to walk part of it I called "the shade path" where houses and grown up trees mostly provided shade. Our new neighborhood provided very little of that and so I wanted to find a new place where we could walk in mostly shade like we used to in Odessa towards the end of our time there.
I started off checking out the nearby parks to the house with Luna on a leash to see if I could find one like Odessa had. First we went to Devine Lake Park nearby but that felt weird. It was closer to the old house than the new one, and even though it provided shade it wasn't so much to make it the answer. Plus the place felt like somewhere we should have gone to when Xena was alive as it was dog friendly and near the old house. Going to a dry lake with one dog just wasn't fun.
Next up was a dog park I found on Ronald Reagan. Turned out to be more a bar than a park, you had to buy a beer to get in and the area for the dogs wasn't big. Luna ended up abandoning me the entire time I was there so she had fun, but it wasn't a place to walk or go back to often.
After that was the Williamson County park I have played disk golf at years ago. Here I found something really cool- two awesome hiking trails that took you really out into nature. The one inside the park was mostly shaded and somewhat fit what I was going for, and the larger trail became an inspirational goal that I eventually came back to with her on a cooler day later in 2018. Also I found a water park and all sorts of facilities that a young boy would enjoy. I started a long relationship with that park that day, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.
Desperate that I hadn't found what I wanted and time was running out, at the end of the week I just got on Google Maps and looked around for areas with lots of trees nearby. I checked out office parks and retail areas, but none seemed to work well. Finally I find an older neighborhood with plenty of trees near the public library. When we went it turned out that there was a path from the library parking lot into this neighborhood, and so me and Luna went and walked there for a while. It had a lot of what I wanted- it had so many trees it was shaded even in the late morning and it all had a sidewalk. Yet walking in other people's neighborhood was awkward, it wasn't that close and so I have only been back once since then.
Finally on a whim I drove into the neighborhood across the highway from our house and in that neighborhood I found a small park that seemed like one of those HOA parks but without the signs that no one could enter. In this parks I discovered a short but shaded loop that blocked 90% of the sun by 5pm in a day. Though it wasn't perfect this became my answer, and I called it shade park.
I have been back to shade park many times since then, taking Luna for short walks or taking Finn for a moment in between physical therapy and day care. Lindsey doesn't find it really satisfying and if I am honest neither do I, but I think part of the appeal is it was the biggest victory I got when I went searching for shade that week. I will always associate it with that first positive memory when I found it.
As for the week, eventually it was over and Lindsey came back with stories and pictures related to those stories of the last great adventure she had before becoming a mom. I mostly stayed silent about the last great adventure Luna and I had exploring the area around our new house, content to let it be a good memory. Eventually bits and pieces came out as we went back to the places I discovered, and a week ago we took Finn and Luna for a walk on that Williamson Country trail for the first time as I dreamed about when I discovered it.
But mostly I remember the week for the bonding time with Luna and Roscoe, and the chance to live based on my priorities 100% one last time. It had a lasting effect that in a way becomes the last really defining memory of my life before being a father. In a search for shade from the sun I found a proper way to sunset my youth, and for that I will always be grateful.
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