On the western edge of Houston’s Memorial Park is the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center. It’s said to offer “an escape from the hustle and bustle of city life and the opportunity to experience the natural world.” I think I should warn you, though, that from many places within the Arboretum the hustle and bustle of traffic on Houston’s 610 Loop still registers. (It could be a swarm of bees, but I’m pretty sure it’s traffic.) What you need to do, if you want to experience the natural world, is burrow into the center of the place. (It’s not that difficult, you just keep walking away from the sound of the bees until you can’t hear them anymore.) Still, because clamor is so much a part of our “natural world” these days, when we do finally get to the quiet of places like the center of the Arboretum, it feels … unnatural. Because of this, some may be hesitant to linger.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the Arboretum. I like having an urban nature sanctuary just minutes from my home. I like that they protect native plants and animals. (Beyond its 155 acres, those plants and animals have to fend for themselves — good luck with that.) And I like that they offer free classes. All good stuff.

Until you get to the center that I mentioned, you can still hear the others, the ones outside the Arboretum, the ones driving from here to there or from there to here or from somewhere to anywhere else, only to turn around and then go back, paying tolls to get here or there or anywhere faster, thinking thoughts we’ll never know about (and who cares, really?), some listening to music turned up loud, others listening to shit turned up even louder, the feisty ones flipping off the meek and the timid, the texters texting, couples cooing or squabbling or making up or listening to a silence turned up to a level worse than loud, the cornered looking for an exit, the comfortably numb content to drive and drive, the guilt-ridden fixed on the rear-view mirror, and all of them doing little or nothing to protect what’s really endangered. We call this modern living.

You can perambulate along shortish or longish trails through the Arboretum, take your pick. Along the way, small treasures manifest themselves: baroque spiderwebs, wet with anticipation; one tendril of green lending meaning to the charred stump surely dead; walking sticks aplenty, and pine cones for pinning with their tips, small secrets scattered, harvested, and skewered, cone against cone, until it all becomes too much and falls away, and you’re left with no choice but the one choice, which is to start again from the beginning.

At least one of the trails leads to a pond. The background buzz of bees fades as you approach. It must be near the center, I think, this pond. It’s quiet. You can listen there. Small shells and tiny heads bob and break the surface. Turtles. After we found them there the first time, my two young sons and I, we never tired of visiting them again. I’m not sure why. They don’t really do anything, but still they seem … well, I can’t say happy. Maybe content, just floating in the water or swimming about, doing what they do (which to my eye only looks like nothing). It’s not a bad life, really, doing what you do.

It’s a different experience, this so-called natural world, an experience of difference. I wanted — perhaps too desperately — to share this with my boys. The plants and the animals, the trails and the turtles, we leave all those behind when we go. But we can fill our pockets with quiet, and with something else — perhaps permission, permission to hear the scent of the woods around you, to smell the swaying of tall grass along the shores, to see the breeze brush against your skin, to taste the memories that buoy you, bubbling to the surface, not unlike the whisperings of submerged turtles.

Like all roads lead to Rome, all trails in the Arboretum eventually lead back to the Nature Center and the adjacent parking lot. Some would say “You’re right back where you started!” But slightly different now, you get in your car and prepare to join the others, the ones coming from here and there and anywhere, all hoping to arrive somewhere, and you merge with the traffic on 610, taking care to signal your intent, aiming for the center, thinking of turtles.