Yesterday afternoon I got to experience new trail. Not new to me, new period.
Earlier this year, volunteers from the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail connected the 60 miles of MST along Falls Lake with 10 miles of trail along the Eno River through its namesake state park. The long-awaited link between Penny’s Bend to Durham’s West Point on the Eno city park penetrates an especially junglelike stretch of the Eno that required little money but a lot of sweat equity by a workforce headed by FMST volunteer Fred Dietrich.
“Did you see the bridge?” asked FMST member John Willis. “We had to haul the 400-pound support beams 100 feet, which was about 99 feet too far.”
The effort is an example of how the vast majority of our recreational trails come to be: through the dedication of volunteers like Fred, John and legions of others.
On Saturday, June 7, you can become one of those legions. June 7 is National Trails Day, a two-decade-old event sponsored by the American Hiking Society in which we celebrate our trails by hiking them, by maintaining them, by building more of them.
So far, according to the American Hiking Society, 25 NTD events are planned in North Carolina; you’ll find a list of them below. We doubt this list is complete, which is why we run it this week. If you have or know of an NTD event not included here, send us the details — or at least point us in a direction where we can find the specifics.
We’ll rerun a more complete list a week from today, on Thursday, June 5. In the meantime, leave Saturday, June 7 open. You have a date with a trail.
