Sense of Place

I live in San Carlos park area and for a residential neighborhood it has more nature than most would think. Obviously there are many roads and houses bunched together but not everywhere. There are scattered lots, numbering about 2 a road, of what I guess would be considered small woodland areas. A few tall oaks, pine trees and palm trees are accompanied by thick ground vegetation definitely show that the area is trying to keep nature around.
Along with the plant life, there are a few small canals in the area. One has flowing water with small fish inhabiting it. Rain, other than the other day, has been scarce lately so the canal wasn’t very large judging by the water marks of the rainy season. The other canal seems to have been clogged up for a while. It’s covered completely in grown up allege with only a few broken branches and someone’s old skateboard helmet peaking through the green blanket of allege.
The wildlife in the area seems to be fine with the packets of forests in the neighborhood. Fish, cranes and turtles take up the canal habitat; of course none would come out when I decided to take the pictures. Birds and squirrels with a few wondering turtles can be found outside of the house and neighborhood but most of the wildlife stays hidden in the patches of woods until night. At night I have seen a raccoon, which quickly ran up a tree when it realized I was there, a couple possums and an armadillo. Even saw a family of wild boar off the side of the road a couple streets down.
I’ve never been down to the rivers until a couple of days ago and it was definitely a different experience than just driving by it every day. I really enjoyed how serene it was. Minus the lack of wildlife to watch the area was perfect. Lighted areas mixed in with tree shadowed images on the canal made me sit there a while and enjoy it. The flow of water was also a lot faster than I believed and sounded like it was out of one of those calming CDs. Now I know that if I have a place that I need to go to relax that I can use the canals as a escape.