And so it begins

January 7 -- Helmer Nature Center, Irondequoit

(Click here to download the trail map)

Today, in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, I wrote the following column:

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. My experience with them has not been good. My New Year’s resolutions tend to survive about a week before my resolve becomes resignation.

So this year, I’m trying something different. Instead of a resolution, I’m setting a goal. That seems a much more positive and forgiving approach.

My goal for 2016 is to explore every single park in our east-side towns and villages. It’s a quest that will teach me a lot about our towns and their natural resources, but I also hope to get in a lot of hiking, which will be great exercise.

It’s a challenge that clearly will keep me very busy. With assistance from paper maps (can you remember those?) and the Internet, I counted about a hundred east-side parks already — and I may find more.

The parks come in all shapes and sizes, with playgrounds and sports fields, and without. There are miniature “pocket parks” with little more than a statue and a bench, and huge wooded areas covering hundreds of acres, encompassing ponds and streams, and stretching across town lines. There are spray parks, a skate park and a zoo. There’s a fitness trail, a Tot Trail, a sidewalk trail and lots of nature trails. There are arboretums and wetlands, lakes and rivers.

Basically, our east-side parks offer something for everyone, and I’m committed to finding out what that something is.

I definitely have my work cut out for me, but I started right away. A few days earlier, my husband Jack and I headed out for a stroll through Helmer Nature Center in Irondequoit, which I had frequently heard about but knew very little about.

In that same column, I described our experience:

Named after former district Superintendent Earle W. Helmer, the Helmer Nature Center is operated by the West Irondequoit Central School District, primarily as an outdoor classroom for environmental studies.

The 45-acre park is located on Pinegrove Avenue, adjacent to the Irondequoit Community Center. It features eight wide, flat and easy-to-hike trails totaling less than 1.3 miles.

It was a comfortable winter day when we hiked, with crisp air and gray skies. We explored several of the trails, pausing at overlooks and watching squirrels chase each other. While the muffled sound of nearby traffic was ever-present, it was easy to become mesmerized by the woodland. Everything was dry and brown, but the bare trees were striking, and the snow under foot had a satisfying crunch.

We hiked for only about 45 minutes, but being enveloped by the park’s tranquility for even a short time was a great way to decompress after a hectic holiday season.

That column received a surprising amount of attention and reaction from readers. Several people said they were looking forward to my regular updates. At least one said she would be taking on the challenge as well. Another recommended I do some letterboxing as long as I'm out there, a hobby with which I am very familiar. (If you don't know letterboxing, think geocaching, but easier, less exopensive and more fun in my opinion.) I am definitely going to take her up on her suggestion, and have already researched which [parks have letterboxes hidden within them.

And so it is that here, on this blog, I will keep a log of the parks I visit, complete with my observations and hopefully a lot of photos.

Thanks for reading!