We generally refrain from hiking at the coast from late March through October. But once Halloween has passed and the flitting and slithering things that give us pause are subdued, our thoughts turn to the coast and some of our favorite hikes in the state. To local hikers, this is the real peak season. Pack a camera, a notebook, a handful of nature guidebooks. Camp, stay in cheap motels. Cook dinner over a camp stove, linger over breakfast, eat lunch on the go. And listen.

November especially is the time to listen to the outdoors. The seemingly constant breeze lets the trees, the grass, the plants tell their stories. Stories that began with a colorful birth in March, that celebrated the lazy days of summer, that grew melancholy come early fall and that ended, much like they began, in an explosion of color. The circle of life lived in just eight months. But what a story to be told at season’s end.

It’s a story told in one of three ways.

Long trails

If you’ve got the time, two coastal trails would love you stay a spell and listen.

• Neusiok Trail, 22 miles, Croatan National Forest, Havelock. The Neusiok runs from the Pine Cliffs Recreation Area southeast to Oyster Point Landing. No need to rush: there are three shelters/camping areas along the way where you can camp and take the time necessary to experience the pine savannah, the bay woods, the bluff overlooking the mile-wide Neuse River, the boggy areas traveled (mostly) by boardwalk. It can also be hiked in sections, the most diverse of which is the northernmost 6.8 miles, from Pine Cliffs south and east to NC 306. Read more here.

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  Weetock Trail, 11 miles, Croatan National Forest, Maysville. Such a tease, the Weetock. From its northern trailhead of N.C. 58 south of Maysville, it’s an open book for the first 6 miles. Maybe there’s a time or two where it plays coy and becomes discrete. But for the most part, no secrets. Then, right when you think you’ve got it understood, it crosses the gravel Jones Landing Road and spends the rest of its way trying to ditch you. This part of the Croatan has been ravaged by numerous hurricanes, the downfall covering large swaths of trail. Seemingly important swaths, because the only clues the trail shares from here on out are the unique metal-strip blazes (old newspaper printing plates) that catch the sun here and there. A challenge, but hey, who doesn’t love a good mystery? Read more here.

Easy beach hikes

Just as we love a good novel to read at the beach in summer, so, too, do we love an easy winter hike — easy in the sense that it’s simple to follow but has a compelling plot. Some of our favorites:

• Carolina Beach State Park, 9 trails, 9 miles, Carolina Beach. Carolina Beach is the Reader’s Digest condensed version of exploring the coast: in just 761 acres nestled between the Cape Fear River and Atlantic Ocean you’ll hike over forested dunes, through forests of turkey oak and live oak, around pocosins, past cypress swamps and through a carpet of carnivorous plants. The ecological sampling here is not to be matched. Learn more here.

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  Fort Fisher Hermit Trail (a k a Basin Trail), 2 miles, Fort Fisher State Recreation Area, Kure Beach. Just down the road from Carolina Beach (6 miles) is a trail that exposes you to one of the more unique views in the state: water in nearly every direction. At the midpoint, the trail passes a World War II bunker, a sturdy concrete structure that, after housing ordnance in WW II, housed Robert E. Harrill, the Fort Fisher hermit who fled here in 1956 and stayed until his unexplained death in 1972. More info here.

• Cedar Point Tideland Trail, Croatan National Forest, Cedar Point, 1.3 miles. No need to get your shoes mucky—an elevated boardwalk traverses much of the 1.3-mile Cedar Point Tideland Trail, in the wetlands where Dibbling and Boathouse creeks dissolve into the White Oak River (then, shortly, into Bogue Sound). In addition to keeping you dry, the boardwalk gives you get a bird’s-eye view of the fiddler crabs and other marsh life below. It is also an especially good spot for birding. More info here.
• Nags Head Woods Ecological Preserve, 4 miles, Kill Devil Hills. At 1,100 acres, Nags Head Woods wrote the book on maritime forests. It’s one of the best examples of such along the East Coast, hence the reason The Nature Conservancy elected to save it beginning in the 1970s. Nearly four miles of trail take you through densely vegetated terrain that includes 11 separate species of oak alone. Also calling the preserve home are 5 species of salamander, 14  species of frogs and toads, at least 50 nesting birds, assorted turtles, lizards and snakes. More info here.
• Patsy Pond Nature Trail, 4.5 miles, Newport. Before the European invasion, about 90 million acres of the Southeast were covered with longleaf pines. Today, that number is closer to 3.3 million. Which makes walking the Patsy Pond Nature Trail like diving into a good history book. A good history in that the forest isn’t just about the longleaf, but also about its supporting characters, including the red-cockaded woodpecker, Carolina gopher frog, bladderwort, sundew and a cast, literally, of thousands. Learn more here.

Coastal plain

There’s nothing plain about these hikes, other than their coastal plain setting.

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  Jones Lake State Park, 6 miles, Elizabethtown. Every time I’ve hiked here it’s been: 1) in winter, 2) 40 degrees, 3) under cloudless skies. In short, perfect. Such a great experience has hiking the 4-mile Bay Trail been that I go back every couple of years to experience the open pine forest on the west side of Jones Lake, the dense bay forest on the east side. A Jekyll and Hyde hike with a total elevation gain of 3 feet. And if I’m hungry for more I can hop across the road (N.C. 242) and continue hiking at Turnbull State Educational Forest. Learn more here.

• Merchants Millpond State Park, 15 miles, Gatesville. Every time I visit I think of the 1950s schlock sci-fi flick, “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” Although there might be alligators here, there have been no confirmed Gill-Man sightings at Merchants Millpond, despite the eerie similarity in swampy surroundings. The park may be known for canoeing on its 760-acre millpond, but the hiking here exposes you to some of the same treats, including bay woods and cypress and tupelo gum swamps. A great day trip. Learn more here.
• Pettrigrew State Park, 4.2 miles. Creswell,. When it comes to hiking you can go for distance or you can go to be awed. At Pettigrew State Park on the shores of Lake Phelps, the Morotoc Trail will certainly awe you with a collection of some of the oldest and largest trees of their kind in the state. Among the ancient oddities are various bay trees, sweet gums, persimmons, and pawpaws; the trunks of some bald cypress trees measure up to 10 feet in diameter; and, poplar trunks exceed six feet. “Vines as wide as human thighs wind their ways up trees as tall as 130 feet.” You’ll also see Atlantic white cedars that reach heights of 100 feet. Prepare for the slowest 2.8 miles of hiking in your life. Learn more here.

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Today’s 90-Second Escape: Christmas on Sullivan’s Island

It was a White Christmas, of sorts, on Sullivan’s Island just north of Charleston. There were the white caps on the waves, which seemed to please the standup paddleboarders. There was the white cast to the sky, the result of seasonally cold (61 degrees) water mixing with unseasonably warm air (mid- to upper-70s). And there were oceans of pasty flesh.

Here’s 54 seconds (hey, it’s the holidays!) worth of Christmas in July on Sullivan’s Island.

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Today’s 90-Second Escape: The Beach

Sometimes, when life starts to unravel, nothing beats a good stare to get things back in order. And in our stare-to-beat-stress experience, there’s nothing better to stare at — or more accurately, in to — than the surf. It comes in, it goes out, it comes in, it goes out … . Add the soundtrack by Pounding Waves and in just 90 seconds you can whip just about any woe. (Especially helpful on this, April Fool’s Day, as you wait to see what the office pranksters have in store.)

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Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast, especially come summer. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. 
To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday, at least during the summer, called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s in the sun.

Today’s 90-Second Escape: The beach.

Some Mondays — and I’m not saying this is going to be one of them — you just need to take a 90-second time out, transport yourself to the beach and lose yourself with comforting assurance of the surf coming in, going out, coming in, going out … .

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We just got back from five days at Brigantine Beach, which sits just north of Atlantic City, N.J., though the gulf between the two couldn’t be greater. Atlantic City is all about glitz and gambling, Brigantine Beach is about kicking back — and kicking in.

Even before we got to the beach I could tell this place was different. One morning having a bagel and coffee ($1.89!) outside Aversa’s Italian Bakery on the town’s main drag, I noticed that maybe one in five patrons arrived by car. The rest either walked or rode their bikes. Like many beach towns, the Brigantine Beach’s streets are wide, easily accommodating cyclists. The larger roads all have bike lanes. And they were all well-used, from people down for the week on beach cruisers to townies (the year-round population is 12,600) running errands on 30-year-old 10-speeds. I’d never seen so many people on bikes. Most surprising: A goodly number were men of retirement age who in other beach settings would be tooling around in a Lincoln Town Car.

The bakery prepared me for the beach. The beach here is wide, about twice the width of Wrightsville, Emerald Isle, or most other beaches along the North Carolina coast. Good thing, because these folks — who judging from their license plates come from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York, in that order — make use of it. Sure, like us, they wheel in 40-gallon coolers filled with beverages and sandwiches. But their beach wagons, made of PVC pipe and bulbous, oversized wheels, also bore all forms of recreation. Horseshoes and bocce balls were big. Families decked out in Phillies T-shirts and hats brought mitts and balls and played catch. Frisbees and assorted other flying discs whizzed over unsuspecting sunbathers, who were more apt to get thumped by an errant paddle ball. Stunt kites kept several sun-and-air worshipers occupied. There wereinfo

rmal family volleyball games, there were more formal (though not

necessarily more competitive) contests on courts

established for the local beach volleyball club. There was the Atlantic City Beach Soccer Tournament, a five-on-five competition that pitted a melting pot of teams against one another.

And that was just on land. Once you hit the surf, there were boogie boards, surf kayaks, surf boards, windsurfers and kite boarders. And, of course, the frolicking you encounter trying not to notice the water is 73 degrees. (At Wrightsville Beach, the temperature was a bath-watery 85.)

In New Jersey, 23.3 percent of adults are obese; in North Carolina, the figure is 29.3 percent. Sure, the New Jerseyans like their hoagies and pork rolls. But as this beach scene suggested, they’re also more likely to get up afterward (30 minutes afterward, presumably, to accommodate proper digestion) and work off their indulgences with a spirited game of volleyball, an endless contest of horseshoes or catch with the kids.

We go to the beach to shed stress. Lying in the sun and having a picnic is certainly part of that process. But as our friends from the Garden State demonstrate, it’s only part of the process.

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