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The first section of the path is all Texas red clay, that pale ochre dirt locals curse when they find it in their yards. It's still damp from recent rainfall, gathering the ghosts of my footprints as I pass. The Mountain View trail at Daingerfield State Park isn't the hardest hiking trail I've ever done by any stretch. For now, that title firmly belongs to a Boy Scout trail up in the Arkansas mountains, a little over 12 miles up and down and up again, requiring boulder scrambles and rock hopping across a fast moving river. No, this trail just a quick drive from home is a cake walk by comparison. That said, there's still a pretty strenuous climb up to the top of the so-called mountain, which is really no more than a hill rising a few hundred feet above sea level, 433 feet according to a sign chained to one of the trees. That climb is worth it though, even as my legs and lungs burn from the effort of a nearly vertical ascent. You don't name a trail "Mountain View" if the view is missing. Despite the early Spring leaves and year-round pines encroaching, I can see for miles. Everything ahead of me is verdant with life, the distance between me and the next hill hiding any remnants of the quickly fading winter. No dead leaves or bare brown limbs. All that's left is the promise of growth both old and new. And those hills are something to behold, stacked one in front of the other like the angular edges of big green books thrown into a haphazard pile, their covers mottled shades of emerald, forest, and olive. It's a view you miss when you're driving through the small towns of rural Northeast Texas. You curse the need to brake your way down a hill to avoid the state trooper up ahead, but you never stop to think about that hill and its neighbors. How they roll and saunter through the landscape in a dance that's much older than any of the people who live on them and zoom over them and, sometimes even, climb right up them to their tops. On this gray Tuesday morning, I remember to be in awe of those hills and to marvel at the natural beauty of the Piney Woods. It's a landscape that people often forget about when the name "Texas" floats through their minds. An early project of the Civilian Conservation Corps, Daingerfield State Park has been nicknamed the "Cathedral of Trees." On a plot of land once decimated by mining, the CCC replanted an entire forest of native trees to build its walls and steeples, their branches and needles the lead between panes of ever-changing stained glass. Today, in the park and in the land beyond it, church is most definitely in session. I sit on the worn bench that might well be an altar and have a drink of water before I hike back down.