Before our GetBackpacking! trip last weekend on the 22-mile Neusiok Trail, we had a little hygiene talk: Share a little less on this hike, I advised. Handle your own water, resist the urge to sample a fellow hiker’s Cherry Cocoa Nib dehydrated breakfast. But I also said we would be spending the weekend in one of the safest places around: the wide-open spaces of the outdoors: few people, lots of room to breath in peace. Our typically worry-free playground seemed even more so in these uncertain times.
Category Archives: Hiking
Lead a hike! A hike leader shares why she does
Temperatures are warming, skies are clearing, wildflowers are blooming and more people are getting the itch to hike. All of which means it’s time for our annual Spring Hike Leader Recruitment Drive. Not everyone is interested or inclined to lead a hike, but if you’ve ever given the notion a thought, there’s a good likelihood a hike leader lurks within. Today, one of our hike leaders — one I personally raised through our farm system — shares what led her to be a hike leader and what she enjoys about it. Kate Rice is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has been leading hikes with us for two years. And, nepotism be danged, she’s also my stepdaughter.
GetOut! Your Friday Nudge for Weekend Adventure
A couple years back I was in need of a destination for our annual winter GetBackpacking! trip to the coast. Typically, the trip is on the 21-mile Neusiok Trail in the Croatan National Forest near Havelock. Unfortunately, the Neusiok was closed, still feeling the wrath of Hurricane Florence’s visit the previous fall. People love backpacking at the coast in winter, and I needed an alternative. Scanning a map, I locked onto Merchants Millpond State Park.
It’s Spring: Take that First Step Down the Trail
In general, New Year’s Day is seen as a time for renewal, for eating better, for exercising more, for simply being healthier and happier. In hiking circles, though, spring is the time to rediscover yourself: warming temperatures, the listless winter world stirring back to life, the overall sense of rebirth. Yup, now’s the time to start hiking. And here’s a peek at how that might look.
GetOut! Your Friday Nudge for Weekend Adventure
One of the goals of our monthly Winter Wild series, which takes hikers to the places they know, then takes them to off trail to the places they don’t, is to expose the hidden human history of where we explore. Sometimes that human history is maybe just 50 years distant. Sometimes, it’s more than 1,000. More often than not when you stumble upon an old foundation, a filling root cellar, or a long-abandoned roadbed, you’re left to speculate about their origins. On this Sunday’s Eno River Association Hike from the Few’s Ford Access, you’ll get a pretty complete story.