Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.
Today’s 90-Second Escape: Neighborhood Wilderness.

It was after 4 on Saturday afternoon and I realized I hadn’t had an adventure. With little more than an hour of sunlight to play with, I didn’t have time to drive anywhere. Fortunately, I live in North Carolina and I did have time to walk to the end of our block. Even in the state’s urban centers — Charlotte, the Triad, the Triangle, where I live — untamed greenspace is never far away. Got a creek that drains your neighborhood? Then there’s a good chance you’ve a bottomland forest to explore. In my case, I’m just a stone’s throw from the headwaters of Walnut Creek, which heads south through my neighborhood, takes a left at Lake Johnson, then heads east through Southeast Raleigh before giving it up to the Neuse River.

C’mon. I’ll show you.