The Texas Buckeye Trail, which begins in South Dallas where Bexar Street ends and meanders through the Great Trinity Forest, is off-limits now. Not all of it is closed, mind you; not the mile-or-so's worth of winding concrete ribbon poured atop the original pathway, which lawyer Ned Fritz, his wife, Genie, and their acolytes cleared through the buzzing, verdant woodlands that stretch 6,000 acres from the city's south and center.

But today, as you approach the wide, sinuous Trinity at trail's end, you're greeted by a steel guardrail wrapped in reflective red and white. In the middle is a white sign with all-cap black letters: "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT." An easy enough obstruction to step over.

On the other side, only a few feet away, lies the river as seen by Dallas' first settlers, the river that defines and defies the city. Once, for an all-too-brief moment on this spot, there was an overlook topped with sandstone boulders upon which hikers could sit for a spell to marvel at the view and soak in the silence.

But all of that has fallen into the river; so, too, has the concrete path laid by city engineers, devoured by an insatiable Trinity that has vanquished these banks in recent years. Whole pieces of it can be seen lying on the riverbanks, carcasses of concrete. Ned and Genie Fritz's trail, paved over using bond money, looks now like the cover of Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends.

I'd gone Tuesday to the Buckeye Trail because one day earlier, with little comment or discussion, two Dallas City Council committees moved to the whole body something titled "Great Trinity Forest Resolution." Among other things, it calls for the city manager to undertake a "comprehensive survey of the Great Trinity Forest, and, continue with acquisition, preservation and maintenance such that the residents and visitors of Dallas may further interact and experience the diverse ecosystems" that are there.

The resolution came with little background materials; no one knew who had brought it to council. At a morning meeting of the Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee, Lake Highlands' rep Adam McGough asked how the resolution reached the day's agenda on its way to a May 8 vote. "The genesis was the mayor," Assistant City Manager Joey Zapata said. Far North Dallas' Sandy Greyson, the committee's chair, added the resolution was the council's way to say "we value the asset and want to move forward to make sure it's protected."

Mayor Mike Rawlings told me Monday what he has said before publicly — that he hopes to see the Trinity Forest turned into a preserve. He mentioned, several times, President Theodore Roosevelt and the creation of the national parks and forests. Rawlings hopes to follow suit and render untouchable the 6,000-acre forest in the floodway.

"I have wanted to make sure we put a line around that forest and protect it from any development, any major changes in it, and really let Dallas have its place for the wild," Rawlings said. "It truly is a special place."

1 / 3The closed portion of the collapsed Texas Buckeye Trail through the Trinity Forest(Rose Baca / Staff Photographer) 2 / 3And this is why it's closed.(Rose Baca / Staff Photographer) 3 / 3Hey, there's more trail!(Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

The resolution is at once vague and comprehensive, in the estimation of accountant Ben Sandifer, the longtime Trinity guide and protector. It's redundant and unnecessary, too, Sandifer said, pointing to the 11-year-old Great Trinity Forest Management Plan that the city published the year Ned Fritz died. The plan "was never implemented and gathers dust," Sandifer says.

He wonders, as should we all: How can we be sure this city will protect a forest it has violated time and again while carving out a golf course few will ever use? How can Dallas at once safeguard its treasure while at the same time allowing gravel-mining and shingle dumping and industrial uses along its fringes? How do you trust a city that tried for decades to plant a toll road in the floodway, and that builds expensive taxpayer-funded trails through the forest and has to close them when they become too dangerous to navigate to the very end?

"A treasure of information exists with certain citizens that will never see light of day because the city of Dallas has violated the trust they were sworn to uphold," Sandifer told me Monday, after I showed him the resolution. "The profound history and beauty of the Great Trinity Forest is known but to a few. The reason it is not shared openly is not one of selfishness, it's that the information will fall into the hands of the wrong people. Who do wrong things. On a constant basis."

The Great Trinity Forest is a magic land, where each step takes you farther from civilization and closer to the heart of the city. It does not exist by accident. We still have the forest only because Ned and Genie Fritz willed it so, cobbling together parcels of the wild and fending off those who would have drowned nature in concrete and clear-cut the forest to nothing.

It's nice that the mayor, on his way out the door, wants to take steps to further protect it; if nothing else, his resolution gave me reason to write about the forest again, to remind Dallas again of beauty that sprawls throughout the south — the city's better-looking-but-worse-off half. Rawlings said Monday that he has waited to do this for years — clarify the forest's boundaries, define each parcel —but could never find a willing city manager. T.C. Broadnax signed on, but it still took a year and a half to get it this far, Rawlings said.

"If we don't figure out how to package that and contain it for future generations, shame on us," said the mayor. "And it hasn't been done. That's what amazes me."

But we can't even get right the trail without which there would have been no Great Trinity Forest, which was given its name by the Fritzes after they fought off the politicians who hoped to turn the river into a channel, and who tried to pave our paradise.

1 / 4The late Ned Fritz in the Great Trinity Forest. "I feel part of this," said the man who, with wife, Genie, fought to save the woodlands when Dallas wouldn't.(Kim Ritzenthaler / Staff photo) 2 / 4A spring sits near the Trinity River in McCommas Bluff Preserve inside the Great Trinity Forest.(Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer) 3 / 4The Texas Buckeye Trail in the Trinity Forest(Rose Baca / Staff Photographer) 4 / 4The Great Trinity Forest as it looked from the sky in 2013, when work was beginning on the golf course seen in the distance.(G.J. McCarthy / Staff photographer)

On May 4 — the day voters will be asked whom they want to serve as the new mayor, and only four days before the vote on this resolution to protect the forest — Genie Fritz will turn 95 years old. I called her Monday to tell her about it, and ask for her thoughts.

"I just don't trust any of the city people," she said with the weary chuckle of someone who had survived countless battles. "I just wonder if the people who really want to sell all that concrete and do all that bad stuff won't come back with another plan to put a toll road down there."

She really just wants the city to rename the Buckeye Trail after Ned. That's all. Because without Ned — and Genie — none of this would exist to even talk about protecting. Not the trail. Not the forest. Not any of it. Ned Fritz, Sandifer said, "is the only reason, the singular reason, the Great Trinity Forest exists today," Sandifer said.

"One thousand years from now, Ned Fritz will still be the man who is credited with preserving it."

Protecting it, for Ned and Genie Fritz, is the least we can do in return.