It started two weeks ago with a serenade by spring peepers in a pond at Horton Grove Nature Preserve. It was reinforced a day later by the sudden appearance of perky yellow daffodils near an old homestead along the Eno River. Then, last Friday, on a hike through bottomland forest at Ayr Mount in Hillsborough, I got the sign I’d been waiting for: a trout lily unfurling its delicate yellow and maroon petals.
Category Archives: Hiking
Your Friday Nudge: Get Out and Find Spring
OK, today’s nudge for spring is more of a tease: today, it’s in the 70s and sunny, tomorrow it will barely top 40 and it looks like rain. Sunday, though, the sun returns, the high temp reaches into the more seasonal upper 50s. So let yourself be inspired to go out Sunday in search of your first trout lily and be serenaded by spring peepers. We found them today at Ayr Mount, on the Poet’s Walk, Hillsborough, and at the recently opened Brumley Forest North in Chapel Hill.
5 Hikes That Fly Under the Radar
They’re the best trails you may not have heard of, those hikes that somehow fly under the radar.
You know the ones: You’re exchanging notes on favorite hikes with a friend and they say, “And, of course, there’s the Birkhead Wilderness.”
The what?
As winter plugs along, hike the coast
In October, we suggested that winter was a good time for taking long hikes at the coast. Fewer biting things flitting through the air, fewer slithering things making their way across the ground. Today, as we’re in the throes of a sustained cold weather hiking season, we return to the coast with suggestions for shorter walks.
Your Friday Nudge …
Last weekend we were frozen in snow and ice, today it’s 70 and raining, it may snow again Wednesday but it definitely will be cold again. Real cold. But this weekend is looking hiking perfect. Temperatures Saturday will be around 50, in the upper 30s Sunday, all under mostly sunny skies. So no time to quibble: you need to get out.