Our Last Day at the Nature Center

Today was our final day volunteering at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge. We finished our trail work with the help of our classmates and the nature center employees, and our trail looks great! Everyone seemed happy with the final result of our trails, and it was definitely proof that many hands make short work! After completing our shoveling, raking, and tampering, we were able to go on a bit of a tour of our trails with the class and explore more of the nature center. The nature center employees spotted an armadillo. This was definitely my favorite part of our day. The armadillo was so small and funny looking! All jokes aside, spotting the armadillo and our discussion about the prairie dogs that used to make their homes in the nature center did make me think a lot about our society today and how we hurt many species homes. While the nature center is home to many creatures, there are so many other wild animals and plants that live even closer to us than the nature center, and we invade their natural habitats every day while we are driving, walking to class, and just going about our every day lives. This was a good reminder to be conscious of how I am affecting nature and potentially hurting another creature’s home.

My favorite part about our time at the nature center this semester was the team bonding and relationships that formed throughout our time there. My group worked really well together and got to know each other very well through out triumphs and struggles repaving our trail, and I got to meet and bond with other students in the class during the days where we worked with other groups. While we shoveled and tampered our clay piles, conversations about people’s weekends, families, other classes, and experiences at TCU created a special bond between many students. I got to meet students that have different majors than my own, but who have still experienced some of the same struggles as me at TCU. At the same time, I also got to hear incredible stories of engagements, new friendships, and academic successes. It was amazing to see how a shared experience in nature could help create and strengthen relationships that may have never happened if it were not for our time at the nature center. I hope these relationships continue to grow and that our work at the nature center was beneficial to all of us as students and also to the city of Fort Worth as we attempted to get a little dirty and fix some of the damaged trails.