“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
— Bluebeard’s Egg by Margaret Atwood
Barring torrential downpours or out of control twisters, spring is a time to embrace being outdoors before the weather becomes unbearably hot.
East Dallas is like a perennial, always blooming with activity, and springtime is no exception. Here’s a few outdoorsy groups built by and for East Dallasites that you can visit for a workout or to volunteer.
Madelyn Knollenberg chose Pilates more out of necessity than recreation.
Knollenberg, who lives in the Ridgewood Park neighborhood, started Pilates a few years ago after being injured in a T-bone car accident. She broke bones in her pelvis and sacrum and couldn’t walk for two months afterward. Once she got back on her feet, she couldn’t lift weights like she used to or be able to work without pain.
“Because I’m an emergency room nurse, I got to go,” she says. “I kind of need to be able to move without any pain or anything.”
In addition to physical therapy, she turned to Pilates at the recommendation of her uncle, and this discovery led her back to a mobile and pain-free life.
Knollenberg created Pilates in the Park to lead free sessions for her neighbors based on her experience.
“I honestly just wanted to share that with other people,” she says. “Pilates is expensive. I know that because I was paying a lot each month for an unlimited membership. I wanted it to be accessible to everyone, people who don’t want to pay $200 a month. And then I really wanted that sense of community that I think a lot of women and men are seeking.”
Knollenberg sought out online certification to teach mat Pilates and launched the classes in Ridgewood Park at Trammel Drive and Fisher Road on St. Patrick’s Day weekend last year. She established the @pilatesintheparkdallas page on Instagram, put out flyers and encouraged her friends and coworkers to try it out. Only three people showed up for the first session, and Knollenberg was grateful to even have that many participants.
“I was like, ‘I’ll be happy if just one person comes,’ and then, three people came,” she says. “Now, we’ll have over 100 people come.”
Pilates in the Park is open to everyone, no matter their gender or skill level, she says. Classes are beginner-friendly, slow, easy on joints and come with modifications if needed. People should come dressed in clothes they can easily move in, and classes can be taken with socks on or barefoot.
Knollenberg expects the next year of classes will start again on St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Because she’s training to be a nurse practitioner, she isn’t sure if she’ll be able to have classes on Sundays, but she says she will definitely lead them on Saturdays at 10 a.m.
The Facebook page for The General’s Guard, a group of cyclists who ride around White Rock Lake, uses a profile picture of Michael Martin’s late father. In fact, the group’s name is a homage to him.
U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert Martin was diagnosed with intestinal cancer around 2006 and passed away less than two years later. While thinking of something he could do to show his support, Michael Martin remembered the Livestrong Foundation, which primarily aims to help cancer patients as opposed to focusing on research. He got together a group of his friends in the White Rock area to ride with him to Austin for Livestrong’s annual cycling fundraiser.
And they’ve been doing that each year since, even during the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone else was participating virtually. The General’s Guard, which consists of about 10 members today, kept going because they realized something as they grew the team.
“Everybody has a cancer story, whether it was their father or friend or themselves,” Martin says.
Since its inception, The General’s Guard has raised over $600,000 for Livestrong and other organizations to support those who live with cancer. They’ve also built relationships with each other that transcend cycling.
“Even if none of us could ride a bike again, we would still have our friendships,” Martin says. “And that’s really the most beautiful ongoing thing for us that we didn’t see coming.”
The General’s Guard is open to accepting new team members as long as they like to ride a bike for long distances and are willing to raise money for cancer patients. They tend to ride together on a weekly basis, but some will get together daily in good weather. They’ll also meet up at White Rock Alehouse and Brewery or The Old Monk to “rehydrate.”
“We talk about how that’s the third element of our team. First is (to) raise money for cancer survivors. Second, ride your bike 100 miles. Third is drink quality beer, not Bud Light,” Martin says.
Members who started in their 30s and 40s are now in their 50s and 60s. They may slow down a little, but The General’s Guard doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
“We have to keep going until there’s no more cancer survivors to support,” Martin says.
Tenison Park Pollinator Garden
It all started in 2016 when the Texas Department of Transportation left some of its road grading equipment on the almost two acres of park area on Grand Avenue.
Hollywood/Santa Monica neighbor Karen Albracht and her neighbor alerted the City and got TxDOT to remove their machines. While walking around the area, a Park and Recreation Department employee made an off-handed remark to Albracht that the park space would make for a nice butterfly garden.
Albracht liked this idea. She collaborated with the City and her neighborhood association to bring the Tenison Park Pollinator Garden to life in early 2017. The garden is filled with native species that act as habitats and nourishment for pollinators — moths, bees and butterflies — and are beneficial to birds and other insects.
In addition to the pollinator garden, Albracht mentioned two other environmental projects near Clermont Avenue — abating soil erosion from going into the creek and a birding area that includes plants that birds like, nest boxes and a bird bath. These areas are no-mow zones, which makes them conducive to plant, bird and insect life.
“Our mission here is to restore habitat that’s been lost to urbanization,” says Albracht, who is a master naturalist.
The pollinator garden and other projects are funded through grants and donations. Maintenance is powered by volunteers, who come out every second and fourth Saturday of the month. Albracht says she usually sees five to 12 volunteers at a time.
“You don’t need to know anything. You will learn by doing,” she says about volunteering. “You might go, ‘I really like that,’ or ‘That’s beautiful. I love that flower. I would like to have that in my home landscape.’ And that’s where I feel like we’ve made a success right there because the more people who put these native plants in their home landscapes, the better off we all are because what they’re going to discover is that they don’t need to irrigate it.”
People come through this green stretch to walk their dogs, have picnics and take photos, Albracht says. They say they come to the natural space to de-stress.
“We want all that. We want the birds and the insects and the pollinators and the native plants, but we want people to come and just relax and sit down and listen to birds,” she says. “That action right there is so good for everybody’s mental health.”
