[0:00] (gentle piano music) [0:02] - Use the park almost every day. [0:04] Anybody I bring down there, they're like, oh my gosh, [0:06] they had no idea that it was here. [0:07] Feels like we're in the middle of the north woods, [0:09] so I kind of call it the boundary waters of Bloomington. [0:12] - As we were walking, [0:13] we saw the snapping turtle laying eggs in the middle [0:16] of the path, digging the hole to lay her eggs. [0:19] Every time we go walking down there, it lets me be wild [0:22] and free, and I enjoy seeing all the animals down there. [0:26] - What I love most about this park is it's a wild oasis [0:29] right in the heart of the city. [0:30] You don't have to drive for it. [0:32] You've got absolute beautiful terrain. [0:34] You feel like you're someplace else, [0:36] and as an artist, you couldn't ask for a better studio. [0:39] - I used to spend many, many hours hiking down [0:42] in the Minnesota River Valley with my cameras, [0:45] and I was a serious photographer. [0:47] I mean, I had my own color dark room. [0:49] - I actually live in Eden Prairie, [0:50] and my sister-in-law told me about Nine Mile Creek. [0:53] So my wife and I, we end up coming to Bloomington [0:55] because the parks are close to us [0:57] and we're familiar with 'em and we love 'em. [0:59] - I recently took a Minnesota Master Naturalist class [1:02] because I knew this referendum had been passed, [1:04] and I wanted to understand the ecosystem here [1:07] and how I could best act as a steward to it. [1:09] You forget that you're in the middle [1:11] of a metropolitan area when you're here, [1:13] and it's one of the last bastions [1:16] of natural habitat in a first-ranked suburb in our area. [1:20] - When my kids were really little, [1:22] one thing I absolutely love about Nine Mile Creek [1:24] is when you get down to the creek area, [1:26] it's a good 10 degrees cooler than anywhere else [1:29] in the city. [1:30] - When we walked on the creek, [1:31] we found some tracks in the snow of a mouse, [1:34] low mouse tracks that ended very abruptly [1:37] with some wing tracks of a hawk, [1:39] and the story was told right there in the snow. [1:42] We moved here in the late seventies, raised three sons. [1:46] They spent most of their growing up years [1:48] in the woods down by the creek. [1:50] - They can walk about a mile and get down to the creek [1:52] and go along it and enjoy its beauty. [1:55] - I heard an owl the other day. [1:56] I opened up my Merlin app [1:58] and recorded all the birds that are here for the migration. [2:02] It's just me and the water and the birds. [2:05] (flowing piano music)