Green Circle Trail is great connection to nature

Although I’ve been working at The Gazette for more than a year, my family and I have only lived here since the end of April, after finally selling our house in Wautoma. We’ve been busy since then and haven’t had much of a chance to explore the area. We got our opportunity over the weekend and haven’t stopped since then.
Saturday, with nothing on our agenda for the first time in months, my wife Jenny and I decided we wanted to do something inexpensive, healthy and fun with our 3-year-old son, Braden. For a year we’ve heard nothing but good things about the Green Circle Trail, so we thought we’d give it a try.
We’ve actually been on portions of it before, but they were the more public ones near roads and parks. We thought it was nice, but little more than a glorified sidewalk.
Boy were we wrong. The segment we decided to walk Saturday was like escaping off this planet to Yoda’s Dagobah System, except there weren’t any serpent monsters that don’t like droids or Darth Vader hallucinations in caves.
Alright, I’m exaggerating a little bit, but the trail was so cool my enthusiasm is making me spew “Star Wars” references. Coming back to Earth, I would say that the trail is a valuable asset to the Stevens Point area, and one everybody should make an effort to use as often as they can.
My family and I are doing so, now that we know how good it is. We walked the section of the trail from Tommy’s Turnpike to the Whiting Mill Saturday, and then Sunday we walked a good portion of it by the Schmeekle Reserve near the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. We returned to the trail Monday to walk a portion by Iverson Park, although that trip ended shortly after it began because we forgot bug spray.
The Tommy’s Turnpike section was the most secluded because, with the exception of two bicyclists, we were the only ones on it. At one point I said to Jenny that this must be what it felt like to walk around in nature back in the 1880s – few signs of civilization, the exception being some railroad tracks, and an abundance of animals and plants. We saw chipmunks, an osprey and her fledge, a deer and two fawns, and enough plants and flowers to fill a greenhouse.
Schmeekle had more people, but in some ways it was a little more fun. We sat on a bench by a pond on the Trail of Reflections, took a journey up a treehouse and walked the “planks” on our way to Lake Joanis. We spotted another deer at the end of our trip taking a nap near the Visitors Center. The deer didn’t even care we were there, only getting up when some bicyclists frightened it.
Iverson was pretty cool, almost creepy in a way, but the mosquitoes were too thick to get far without spray. We’ll return soon.
Jenny and I are already planning on spending an entire day walking as much of the trail as we can. We probably won’t take Braden with us, since he tends to get tired of walking after about 90 minutes, but we’ll bring him on our shorter jaunts so he can develop an appreciation of the outdoors.
I thought moving to a bigger city from a rural area like Wautoma would mean our connection to nature might disappear. Now I’m convinced it will only get stronger, since we now have access to something as great as the Green Circle Trail, as well as other parks and nature reserves we plan on checking out soon.
Wautoma may have been surrounded by nature, but most of it is inaccessible since it is privately owned. So although we could drive past it, we couldn’t get out and actively enjoy it, like we can here. And that’s something I plan on bragging about to our Wautoma friends.