My Outside Magic

Tuesday, April 28, 2026
My outdoor experience was our trip to the Fort Worth Zoo today. The zoo was a great place to take a nice long walk. Despite it being an extremely humid day, I enjoyed the time spent outdoors. While I feel that I cannot fully call this an outdoor submersion because let’s face it, the zoo is completely man made, it was nice to just be outside and get to see wildlife. The zoo sometimes in the past has made me feel sad, to see these animals cooped up and not in their natural habitats like I thought they should be. But as I did more reading today about their different animals, I have realized they are doing things often for the animals good. The zoo is full of restorative and conservation projects, not simply all for the enjoyment of people. I think that may be what zoos were in the past, but now they have become more focused on education and enriching the lives of the animals. 
While leaving my house to go to the zoo today, I was concerned about the weather. Storms were likely in the area today, and rainfall expected. I stressed out about it leading up to leaving for the zoo. But once I was there, I realized I couldn’t stress about it. The weather is not in our control. All of nature is not in our control. We can try to plan and predict all we want, but truly at some point there is nothing we can do it about it. It feels almost freeing in some ways. I remember having this conversation in one of our first classes. The people are often trying to control different habitats, but eventually we must all come to realize that it is just going to be what it is. 
My favorite animal we saw today was the black bear. While we were walking by, he had gotten “the zoomies” in which he was racing around his enclosure. Then he jumped in his pool and started chewing on a stick he had in there. It reminded me so much of my two dogs at home, and how they really are not all that different. Animals have energy that they need to get out, and they love to have an audience watching them. It made me smile and made my day to see the little bear having so much fun. 









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