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.

Today’s 90-Second Escape: Evening Summer Paddle

Here’s something we hope to be doing a whole lot more of this summer: hang with us for 90 Seconds on this escape from three years ago and you’ll understand why.

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Wednesday evening, after seeing that the temperature had dropped to 73, I did just that — abandoned whatever it was I was doing and headed to Umstead State Park. A 10-minute drive, the 5,700-acre forest in the heart of the Triangle is a handy escape, especially at times like this.

By 7 on a summer’s weeknight the parking lot is usually near empty, a half dozen cars, 10 tops. This evening, there are 30 cars in the lot. Many are trail runners (I cross paths with several on the trail). Some are cyclists (at least based on their car racks) and the rest are hikers. Some of the latter, bearing heavy packs, appear to be training for backpack trips, but most seem like me, taking advantage of the first cool summer weather in a long while to enjoy eventide.

At this time of year, the evening forest light is indecisive. The summer solstice is nearly two months past, and the grace period when we’re not getting perceptively short-changed on sunlight is starting to pass. Yet we’re still not to the point where the end of every day signals the imminent end of after work daylight. For a good hour the light is consistent, muted by a milky cover of high clouds. Occasionally, there’s a break and the treetops take on a brilliant glow. Little direct sunlight reaches the forest floor; creeks run dark, underscoring the cool of the evening.

The canopy remains a healthy green, the understory as well; thus, despite the cool air the woods retain a summery feel. Listen, though, and you’ll pick up on another hint of fall. On a typically hot summer evening these woods, near the creeks and ponds, would be humming with a chorus of frogs. Tonight, only a handful — less, probably — of northern cricket frogs can be heard, their distinctive chirp, a glick-glick-glick, penetrating the quiet. Come October, the occasional, chirp of a lone holdout is one of the truest signs of fall.

Somewhere down the trail I remember the trailhead sign advising that the park closes at 9 p.m. In another couple weeks, the diminishing daylight will close the gates at 8; come November and throughout the winter the park’s official day will be over at 6, eliminating these after work escapes altogether. I check my watch and estimate how much farther I can hike and still make it back to the car by 9. I’m not wasting a moment of this evening.

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The post A cold front, a hike, a reminder that summer is passing appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

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 this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday 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: Watching the sun set on another workweek from the cockpit of a kayak.

At 4:30 Friday afternoon, there was a steady rain, the same steady rain that had been falling for most of the past two days. At 4:40 the rain stopped and at 4:45 the gray sky began to lighten. At 4:46 I was putting the kayak on the car and heading west, to Jordan Lake.

For much of the summer, I’d been threatening to end a workweek with a paddle in my hands. For a variety of not-really-good-enough reasons, it still hadn’t happened. Since I couldn’t come up with a not-good-enough reason to stay home, and because at one point I actually thought I’d seen the sun poke through, I found myself unloading my little Old Town Loon 100 at the Ebenezer Church boat ramp at Jordan Lake.

Two things to like about this particular put-in from a kayaker’s perspective: One, It’s a 24-hour launch, so you can stay on the water as long as you like. Watch the sun set? Why not stick around and watch the stars come out? And two, while the vast majority of motor boats head west from here, to the main body of Jordan Lake, the savvy kayaker heads east, under the Beaver Creek Road bridge to the relative peace and quiet of two Jordan fingers that eventually dissolve into Beaver and Little Beaver creeks, both ideal for winding down a long week in the trenches.

C’mon. Let’s go for a paddle.

The post 90 Second Escape: An evening paddle on Jordan Lake appeared first on GetGoing NC!.