Barefoot in the Park - Part II: The Trail Warm-Up

For city folk -- so nature deprived -- our tax dollars are hard at work trying to provide some little pseudo-nature experiences for us in the middle of our urban concrete jungle.  When we want to experience what it might be like on a real trail hike, we can just come over here:

I took a walk on this the other day, as I mentioned before, in my Tevas.  I thought, "wow, I have a real trail, right near my house!  A practice trail.  This is almost as good as the Tigram Trail Treadmill  ac posted on his blog Running Down a while back.

Well, you can be sure I'm not ready for any trail running yet, being the barefoot beginner miler that I am, so I planned to just walk it barefoot today.

Next I stepped on to the gravel path. I thought that these teeny tiny gravel stones might hurt, but they actually felt nice.  I didn't think I would like the dirt either, but it actually felt silky and smooth.

After that was the bridge with the wooden planks.

:

Here a little clearing looked out at the lake.

There's actually some glass here, but I don't think you can quite make it out in this picture. It's the green and blue colored bits.

There were sections of rocks that DID hurt. I just walked carefully.

 This was some dangerous broken glass!  There was a lot of broken glass back there. I think people drink back there.

And here were some berries on the ground.  Would they stain my barefoot feet?

And now a light at the end of the tunnel.  The end of the "trail" leading back out to the lake, where I would begin to run.

But before beginning my "run by the lake," I would need to dispose of just one thing that I had been carrying:

The next post will continue this adventure in Part III: Run Around the Lake