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: Summer in January.
Last week, after four straight days of gloomy winter overcast we celebrated with a 90-Second Escape to blue skies past. Today, along a similar vein, we escape the seasonal chill of winter’s dog days and revisit the heat of summer.
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Got a plan for 2012?
Got a plan for this year? If you don’t, you need one.
If you vowed to be better this year, you need to start planning. You need goals to move you along. You need a carrot to get you out of bed and ride on a morning when it’s 25 degrees out. You need incentive to lace up your Asics and do your weekly track workout when your body is saying it would rather stay on the couch and watch the second half.
This weekend hike into the past
Hiking into the past: It’s all the rage in North Carolina this weekend … .
Coast
Feeling competitive? Have three friends, at least one of whom is the opposite sex? And are all of you 16 or older? If you answered yes to all of the above, consider about heading down to Emerald Isle Saturday for the Emerald Isle Parks & Rec 4 x 4 Volleyball Tournament. Entry fee is $55, winner gets 70 percent of the pot ($231 if the maximum of six teams signs up), second place gets 30 percent. You must preregister by 5 p.m. Friday, by calling 252.354.6350.
Predator! (Or pussy cat?)
Alan stopped dead in his tracks. I nearly ran into him.
“What is that?” he whispered.
His headlamp was fixed 30 feet up the trail and maybe 10 feet to the right. There, two bright green eyes starred from the brush.
We were on the Falls Lake section of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail on a seven-mile night hike, and I thought of the two things it could reasonably be: a fox or a bobcat. The eyes were the critter’s most easily identifiable feature, but we could also make out a rough outline of its head.
“It’s ears seem a little small for a fox,” I whispered back.
“Could it be a bobcat?” Alan asked. Suddenly, we both sounded like Marlin Perkins.
A month earlier, in the middle of the day, I’d inadvertently treed a bobcat on the Bartram Trail in western North Carolina. It had behaved the same way: holding its ground and holding eye contact even as we eased closer.
“Take two steps,” I said, nudging Alan up the trail. Now I was like Marlin Perkins using Jim Fowler as a protective shield. Alan, apparently unfamiliar with the Wild Kingdom dynamic, took two steps forward. The eyes held their ground.
“Take two more steps,” I whispered. Alan hesitated, then took two more steps. The eyes remained fixed.
We were nearly perpendicular to the critter. I flashed the critter from a side angle and my headlamp caught it in a revealing side profile.
“It’s a cat,” I said.
“A house cat,” Alan clarified. Indeed, it was a handsome, healthy Tabby. “What’s a house cat doing way out here?”
“Probably came from up there,” I said, turning and pointing up the slope where, not 30 yards away, sat a spacious, well-lit home, one of many that dot the trail along the 26-mile stretch between NC 50 and the Falls Lake dam.
We stared at the cat for a few more moments, it stared back. Finally, in silence, we moved on.
Such is life in the Wild Kingdom of the Triangle.
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90 Second Escape: Blue Skies
I grew up in Colorado, where the sun shines, on average, 642 days a year. It’s now been four days since I’ve seen the sun here in the Triangle and the weather people say we shouldn’t count on seeing it today. Well I can’t wait.
Get out your cocoa butter, folks. Here’s 90 seconds of ol’ sol to tide us over.