Yesterday I felt like getting in a good, full-body, no-nonsense workout.
So I raked the yard.
Raking leaves used to be a Rockwellian pursuit epitomizing fall in America. A time when we rolled up our flannel sleeves, grabbed the Yo-Ho and dedicated ourselves to a Saturday in the yard. For weeks, it seemed a pointless task: Rake a bunch of leaves, a bunch more would fall. But we persevered until the last fallen oak-leaf soldier had been eradicated. We derived a sense of satisfaction through the process, both physical and in the knowledge that we were keeping the homestead in order.
Then, something happened. The birth of cable TV and the promise of 14 straight hours of college football on Saturday, perhaps? Or was it the invention of the leaf-blower, which introduced horsepower to the task, making it suddenly attractive to our 10-year-old kids? Maybe raking’s demise as an respectable physical activity can be attributed to the lack of a celebrity promoter, a Suzanne Somers or a Tony Little, to add sizzle to the cause.
Whatever, raking leaves has become yet another act of physical exertion that we’ve dropped from our repertoire. Which is a shame, because with the meager investment of $15 for a rake (the Ab Circle Pro, by comparison, is $199.75 plus $34.50 shipping and handling), you can get one good full-body workout.
According to AARP.org, raking leaves offers various benefits. It works your arms and upper body and, perhaps more importantly, tones your core — your stomach and back muscles. Maybe you won’t develop six-pack abs by raking leaves, but you will tone your body’s most important muscle group. (Check out this AARP article for tips on raking and bagging.)
Raking can also offer a good aerobic challenge, especially if you make the activity a challenge in itself. At the risk of raising eyebrows, I try to set a PR every time I take to the leaves. The first time I tackled the yard this season, it took me 23 minutes and 15 seconds to rake the north quadrant of our front yard; Last week, I nearly cracked the magical 20-minute barrier, cause for a victory lap around the cul-de-sac.
Perhaps most seductively, raking burns calories, more than you might imagine. According to the Self.com Health Calculator, a 170-pound person burns 348.16 calories during 60 minutes of leaf raking. That beats the following activities (according to another calculator, the Fitness Partner calorie calculator):
A remote encounter of the hiking kind
I rounded the bend and came to an abrupt stop. Not 10 yards away a woman on all fours wearing a jester’s hat and a full backpack was shinnying across a downed hemlock that crossed the creek. On the far side of the creek were two other female backpackers: one taking pictures, the other encouraging the scooter. “You’ve got another photographer!” one of the landed women informed the scooter.
The scooter turned her head. “Oh! Hi!”
Curious as the scene was, it was to about get curiouser. “Joe Miller!” yelled the woman with the camera.
A Thursday afternoon, first week of November, on a backcountry trail bridging Mt. Sterling and the Cataloochee area in the Smokies: What were the odds of running into someone I knew? Pretty good, if it was fellow guidebook writer Danny Bernstein.
Danny, a retired college professor, and her husband moved to the high country not long ago. In 2007, her “Hiking the Carolina Mounains” was published, and this past April her “Hiking North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Heritage” came out in. Her latest adventure: section hiking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. She and Sharon McCarthy, the jester-hatted scooter (she wound up walking most of the log), are doing the whole trail. “Carolyn [Hoopes, the third hiker in their party] comes along when she feels like it.”
It was late in the day and we were all racing the sun, Danny, Sharon and Carolyn to get to campsite 40, about 4 miles down the trail, me to loop back to my car 6 miles up the way. Thus, I didn’t get much time to find out what else Danny was up to. Fortunately, she keeps an active blog.
“It’s crazy running into someone you know on such a remote trail,” I said just before we parted ways.
“Acutally,” Danny corrected me, “it’s not so remote. It’s the Smokies.”
Why stay in shape
Tuesday evening I sat against a log, just off the Appalachian Trail, bundled against the cold, and watched the sun set. At 4,000 feet on a ridgeline, several miles from civilization, it was a long, slow show. When the curtain turned a deep crimson, I noticed it wasn’t getting darker. I glanced over my shoulder to find a full moon cresting over a near ridge to the east. I switched position and sat for another half hour. It took seven miles of hiking up more than 2,000 vertical feet with 35 pounds on my back, but it was worth it. I’m pretty sure I had the best seat in the house to see November 3rd come to a close in North Carolina.
Night hiking: Beating the Standard Time blues
With the end of Daylight Savings Time on Sunday, GetGoingNC.com is looking at various ways you can keep active during the dark times ahead.
For maybe the fifth time in five minutes Alan stopped to comment on the trail. “This is a great trail,” he commented. And for the fifth time in maybe five minutes I reminded him that we had hiked this same trail maybe a half dozen times. His sense of discovery was justified, though. This was the first time we’d hiked the trail in daylight.
Hikes You Can Do: Buckquarter Creek
Every Wednesday through Thanksgiving, GetGoingNC.com will feature a hike in North Carolina that just about anyone can do. It won’t be a long hike (though we may throw in a recommendation for going longer), it won’t be strenuous hike (there could be a hill-climb option as well). The hikes will be timed to coincide with the changing colors of fall. This week, the 1.5-mile Buckquarter Creek Trail in Eno River State Park.