Mid-July is not the best time to go hiking in the Hill Country of central Texas – it is really hot and humid, but there is little chance of cloud cover or rain. That said, I did it anyway, because I was in the Hill Country in mid-July, and I like to go hiking in remote locations. But I kept thinking, it is so hot out here. I took plenty of water, and even on the hottest of hikes I felt better prepared than others I saw on the trail, particularly that family of five that had two half-liter bottles, one of which was empty. I kept thinking about two things I tell my students: One, that an organism is an exceedingly complex chemical reaction in an aqueous medium, and that you have to keep your reaction vessel hydrated or your reactions cease to function properly, and two, that the corollary to the Leonardo DiCaprio principle is that it is necessary for endothermic homeotherms to thermoregulate in the terrestrial environment.
I had lots of company at Enchanted Rock SNA, but at Hill Country SNA, I passed three equestrians early in my hike, and that was it. This is a remote area, and there was almost no development anywhere to be seen.
HCSNA totals about 5400 acres, and the surrounding area is mostly ranches – it is too far from San Antonio for there to be much development.
I hiked a trail that went up to a loop that went around a bluff.
There were no other hikers, and the area was so remote that there was almost no sound – I have been in very quiet places before, but there was no traffic noise, no noise of airplanes, no voices. It was so quiet I could hear insects flying; the only real sound was the breeze in the trees.
Many of the trails at HCSNA are accessible to equestrians and bikers (not motorcyclists), and the trail etiquette is for hikers of yield right of way to both equestrians and bikers, and for bikers to yield right of way to equestrians. The logic of this is that horses may spook easily, and this can be dangerous for riders, especially along trails that are near a cliff (which some were). I am not too keen on hiking along trails where horses have passed, because of what they leave behind.
If you look closely, you will see a dung beetle working this pile of manure.
This was another place where there was quite a bit of wildlife, although you had to look closely to spot it. There was some bird life, but the lizards were the most common creatures. There were numerous whiptails (AKA six-lined racerunners).
And quite a few greater earless lizards (Cophosaurus texanus).
There were few wildflowers, but some of the yuccas were in flower
And there was some phlox.
But there was essentially nobody else hiking at HCSNA the day I was there
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