You may have guessed from some of my posts – and my eternal fascination at some of modern metropolis lifestyles that I am, at heart, a small town girl.

Of course, that just makes the big cities all the more wonderful and wonderous to me.  All of the essentials of big city life that are a big yawn for long-term residents still seem a bit magical to me.   I really do feel a bit like Dorothy at the gates to the Emerald City.

I guess, even with all of my travelling, the rural redneck remains..

Never has this been more obvious than during my current stay in Texas..  Despite living in the shadow of the mega-freeways, I remain fascinated, and awed by their sheer size and scope.  The challenge has been trying to bring this to life with my camera..  I’ve tried on multiple occasions, and on every road trip since we’ve been here – but the results have been well, rather uninspiring..

How can something that is so captivating to me, (yet so pedestrian to the  local citizenry) be so difficult to capture?

But I have included a gallery of my most recent attempts – in a mix of color and black and white..  The photos below come from the Cottonwood Trail.

The Cottonwood (Creek) Trail

Just a few days ago – we wandered off our usual trail for our walk.. We took the path, that is (literally) less travelled – and headed down the Cottonwood Trail.   (I wouldn’t recommend it for solo journeys – we didn’t pass a single other person for much of the walk – in some pretty desolate areas.. Then, as we passed through some sketchy areas; there were large groups of homeless men gathered at the side of the trail.)

The desolation, the sense of aloneness is overwhelming, and bewildering since the trail winds thorough the heart of the maze of freeways that make up the cosmopolitan city.  Yet – alone we were on trails the snaked beneath the very freeways that rumbled and trembled above us, reducing the sky to just a sliver of blue.  At times, the roar of traffic was so loud as to be deafening, with the bombardment of noise coming from all directions – ricocheting off the acres of concrete, in the valleys beneath the elevated roadways.

Maps of Trails in Dallas

Much of the trail (along with much of Dallas) is under construction, so we took a couple of detours during our outing – including a trip past Mount Calvary Cemetery.