Before the Heat: A Walk in a Wild Pocket Forest
- Alexander Kwapis
- Aug 24
- 3 min read
The air is light before 7 am, and the sun's soft glow has yet to turn into a sweltering ray on the Oak Cliff area. It's that rare part of a Dallas summer morning when the world hasn't baked yet. As I sipped my morning coffee, I left the treelined neighborhood of Elmwood and drove down Hampton Road. Just off the corner of Kiest, I pulled off the cement streets and onto an earthen two-track lane that led me to the trailhead of the Kiest Conservation Area.
Sometimes, the best wild places are those just steps away from your front door.
I was accompanied by my dog, Esme, and she was already leaning into her leash, tail wagging and banging against the backseat as she waited for me to let her out of the car. She knows. Dirt underfoot means we're heading somewhere good. We left the polinator field, which features over 150 different plants next to the trailhead, and stepped into the trees; we were swallowed almost instantly by the lush green wildness.
This wild pocket forest, tucked behind the Kiest tennis center and sheltered by time, doesn't announce itself. There's no gift shop. No joggers in neon. And at this hour, nearly no one else is there, just Esme, the scent of warming earth, and a hush from the city life. Just three and a half miles as the crow flies from downtown Dallas, Kiest Conservation Area is one of many pocket green spaces in the Oak Cliff area.
We begin our wild wander on the main access path, the Bridle Trail. We passed a native prairie meadow untouched by time and the plow. We continued past the left turn to walk the meadow loop and headed towards the river. Once on the Burr Oak loop, we took the meandering trail clockwise next to the ravine through a curtain of old-growth trees. A few wooden benches sit quietly in clearings scattered through the trail system. The trail is wide enough to breathe, narrow enough to feel personal. The forest envelops you, making you feel as though you have stepped into a wild place.
There's a rhythm here, like the forest remembered what it used to be. You can feel it in the way wildflowers edge back toward the meadow or the way sunlight filters gently through the canopy. A series of signs along the path tell the story of how it came back to life. It started in 2009, with a grant and a few folks who believed it was worth saving. Friends of Oak Cliff Parks. Parks Department. Scouts. Neighbors. People who noticed. That kind of care doesn't shout. It settles in.
The popular Kiest Park covers 260 acres, but the Conservation Area on the south side occupies about 79 acres of them. You could walk the loop in under an hour if you didn't stop to take in the sights. However, that would miss the point. This isn't a trail for pace. It's a trail for presence. Esme loves the cool area and green dappling light. She snorts into the brush, catching some scent only she can read. During these hot summer days, early morning walks on dirt with your dog are better for them and you than midday sidewalk strolls.
There's something beautiful about a forest that almost disappeared, and because it was forgotten, it was saved. Recently, in 2024, Greenspace Dallas used a $75,000 grant from WFAA Channel 8 to expand the trail system that Esme and I were walking on. They added onto the original 2009 Bridle Trail and the 2017 Meadow Trail. On the eastern and southern sides of the Kiest Conservation Area, two new paths to life were cut out of the woods. The Southern Burr Oak and the Eastern Creekside Trails effectively doubled the total miles of trails within the park. Along with the new routes, the project added fresh signage, shaded picnic tables, benches, and a new information kiosk near the new eastern entrance and the original western entrance to help orient visitors.
This isn't Big Bend National Park. It isn't even the popular Dallas hiking trail system, the Cedar Ridge. But in a city that runs on concrete, a quiet dirt path where the only sounds are birds, a slow-moving Five Mile Creek, and the wind passing through the trees, it feels like a small kind of sacred.
We loop back toward the car, and I think of the Nature Triangle. The idea that we need nature, like we need water or sleep. This trail is part of that for me. A daily dose. A place where the light stays soft a little longer, the air is cooler, and you don't have to talk to anyone. A pocket forest, mostly forgotten, but still alive.
Esme laps water from her bowl before jumping into the back seat. Her paws are dusty, and her job here is done.
We'll be back.
