Beyond the Volkswagen plant, where crews work like ants constructing the new $1 billion auto assembly plant, a group of hikers marches through the woods.
They stop at a pond, a little body of water loud with the sounds of croaking frogs and tucked away in the county’s yet-to-open Enterprise South Nature Park.
The hikers, led by park supervisor Tom Lamb, move under a tent sheltering some chairs.
“Did anybody get lost?” he asks as about 20 people, a mix of adults and children, smelling of bug spray and sunscreen, take their seats.
The pond’s slowly moving water swarms with dragonflies and tall blades of grass whip in the wind. Bare trees poke toward the sky like witches’ fingers. Not a good place to swim perhaps, but a good place to study water ecosystems.