I typically have a deaf ear when it comes to poetry. In fact, just about anything classified as literature.
But recently, I ran across a passage from English poet William Wordsworth that resonated:
There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct preeminence retain
I was talking this week with Jim Grode, Trail Resource Manager for the Mountains-to-Sea Trail about backpacking opportunities on the statewide trail. We started in the coastal plain (Neusiok Trail, Jones Lake/Turnbull Creek area), moved to the Piedmont (six campsites along Falls Lake and the Eno River in the Triangle), and finally, on to the mountains.
Brent Laurenz, executive director of the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, pretty much summed up the situation in Western North Carolina in an email sent to the Friends group earlier this week:
“In the coming weeks and months, we will be surveying the trail and assessing damage, but trail restoration is a very low priority in light of the ongoing humanitarian crisis facing western North Carolina … it is likely that sections of the trail will remain closed for a significant length of time.”
This past weekend GetBackpacking! set an SKT — Slowest Known Time. In this case, the Slowest Known Time for a lunch break on a backpacking trip.
* * *
Before we set out Saturday morning from our campsite at Yellow Mountain Gap on the Appalachian Trail, I outlined the morning plan. “We’ve got a long climb — 900 vertical feet in 1.7 miles — up to Little Hump Mountain. We’ll take a break there. Then head on to Hump Mountain for lunch.”
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 or slide show 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.
