By Joanne Niswander

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. My friend Mary and I had just left another friend's home where we had enjoyed lunch together. One of our table conversations had been about the spiffy new "Motter Metro Park" sign that had recently appeared along Grove Road, just across from Maple Grove Cemetery.

None of us had remembered seeing anything in the news about it. What was this new park in our midst?

So, being curious and having nothing else to keep us from investigating, Mary and I got in the car and drove out Grove Road, pulled onto a smoothly-graveled drive, parked the car and got ready for a hike.

A wide swath had been bush-hogged from the field, and evidently rototilled as well, so that we could easily walk side-by-side down the curving path. Soon the path separated and we could see that we could make our return trip another way.

The trees near Riley Creek were on our left, a field of corn on our right, clover and meadow grasses of all sorts in between. Our paths joined at a small grove of trees, then went on their separate ways again as far as the eye could see.

How big was this park? We kept on going and came to another join. Still more path led us ahead. Would this go all the way to a line of trees we saw far in the distance?

We looked to the east and spotted, between the trees, what we thought might be the Whippy Dip. But we weren't sure. Just where were we?We walked on farther, until we came to another clump of trees and - believe it or not - a hill. Well, a northwest Ohio hill. Nothing to get excited about. But it was a small change in the terrain, anyway.

The path kept on going. By this time, we were sure that the path would eventually take us to that line of trees still some distance away.
It was at this point we decided that our Sunday sandals weren't really meant for hiking.

We'd go back to the car, then come back another day (with other, more suitable shoes) to see just how far the paths really did go.The grasshoppers and butterflies followed us back to the car. We shook the dust off our shoes and headed home.

But we'll go back. That far-off line of trees is still beckoning!