What’s more important to nurturing Mother Earth than anything?
Water.
So in a way, it’s appropriate that we shall spend Earth Day this year getting drenched. A week of sun, a day of rain: What better prescription for the planet we love?
That being the case, instead of kvetching about our plans for tomorrow — which is Earth Day, btw — on the verge of being rained out, we instead make the most of what, in Mother Nature’s view, is a good thing, we make the proper adjustments. In our case, that means tweaking the Year of the Trail Weekend Trail Days Festival we’ve been planning with the city of Eden, the county of Rockingham, and the Dan River Basin Association over the past eight months. (“We” incidentally, being the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources’ Hometown Strong initiative, of which I am employed.)read more
Next weekend marks the third NC Trail Days Festival Weekend sponsored by local communities and the N.C.Department of Natural and Cultural Resources’ Hometown Strong initiative as part of Year of the Trail. The festivals’ goal: to highlight the exceptional recreational resources in our rural areas.read more
We head into the wayback machine again to revisit the timely topic of trail etiquette. The following first appeared here on March 19, 2010, and has appeared occasionally since. It reappears today, with minor revisions.
A few years back, I was running the bike and bridle trail at Umstead when I came upon a sizable obstacle: a phalanx of hikers bearing backpacks spanned the width of the trail, spilling over onto the shoulders. The trail is quiet generous, a converted fire road that should be capable of handling boatloads of trail users without conflict. Provided those trail users are cognizant of other trail users. Which brings us to today’s topic:read more
Every few years we rerun this post at the start of the spring/summer hiking season because of its relevance. Face it, you may consider yourself a year-round hiker, but that may only mean you hike once or twice a month in the winter months. And that’s not enough to sustain you through those upcoming epic hikes you have planned for summer.read more
Editor’s note: We run this piece every year around this time. The extra hour of afternoon daylight that Daylight Saving Time grants us means we can hit the trail after work. But that comes with a caveat — and some advice, which follows.
For much of the winter, the sun set long before we had a chance to enjoy it after getting off work. Now, it stays out later and later, and so do we. Sometimes later than we anticipated. read more
