You know why you haven’t taken up backpacking?
Because you think you have to hike with 40 pounds on your back with every footstep you take.
Well, you don’t. If every backpack trip we took involved lugging a full pack for days on end, we wouldn’t backpack, either.
I’d just finished leading a hike at the Butner Game Lands along Falls Lake. I had 5 miles under my belt, a good day in my book, and besides, I had a boatload of chores to do at home. But the sky was a cloudless blue, the temperature was on its way into the mid-70s, and I was 15 minutes from the only place in the piedmont where I was 99 percent sure I would find the thing that, for me, means spring has truly arrived.
Spring officially is three weeks away; is it too soon to start the countdown?
Actually, it’s a bit late.
Here’s how my spring countdown unfolds, beginning with …
Imbolc, Feb. 1. This traditional Gaelic observance marks the mid-point of winter, halfway between the winter solstice (Dec. 21) and the spring equinox (March 20).
Here’s our annual note for when the temperature seems too cold to hike.
Tomorrow morning the forecast calls for a temperature in the upper teens, rising to maybe 40. But it will be sunny, and a little sun can make up for a lot of cold.
North Carolina has, on average, 28 clear days every winter; only seven states see more cloudless days, according to data compiled from two climate agencies. Virginia averages 25 clear days. In short, you could live in much worse places to avoid feeling SAD
It was coming up on 4 p.m. on New Year’s Day when I got the nagging feeling I’d forgotten something. Black-eyed peas, check. Resolutions for 2026, check. Sticky notes all around to remind me to write “2026,” check. What could it —
Oh yeah — a hike!
Last week we got ahead of ourselves with “5 Ways to Enhance Your Off-Trail Adventure,” a piece that assumed you might already have some experience venturing off trail. So this week, we go back a decade to a piece we wrote offering advice for those of you thinking about venturing off trail. Read it, then read “5 Ways to Enhance Your Off-Trail Adventure.”
