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.
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.
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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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.
For a guy who’s dedicated his life to public service and is perhaps the politician most closely associated with forward-thinking transportation policy, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-OR, says it’s not elected officials who drive progressive thinking when it comes to creating livable communities.
And Blumenauer knows livable communities, having lived his life in one of the nation’s most living-friendly — Portland. He went to Portland’s Lewis & Clark College, served in the State Legislator, was a Multnomah County Commissioner, served on the Portland City Council, was Portland’s Commissioner of Public Works, and has served in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he’s currently on the Ways and Means and Budget committees. And he’s played a pivotal role in Portland’s transformation from another American city beholden to pavement into a city that now: