The highlight of my weekend: handing a bottle of water to someone.
Close second: taking an hour to clear a two-foot wide, 15-foot-long swath of forest.
Slow weekend?
Hardly.
Not long ago I decided I should become more giving to the various outdoors communities I benefit from. I’ve written three books about hiking trails, so that seemed a good place to start. And last week I got a Facebook message from a bike team I once belonged to asking for help. Why not? I thought.
Saturday is National Trails Day, a day set aside for us to appreciate the more than 200,000 miles of trail in the U.S. Officially, National Trails Day dates back to 1991, when the American Hiking Society deemed that one day a year be set aside to honor our trails; the first NTD, however, didn’t occur until June 5, 1993.
I write a fair amount about the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and for good reasons:
It’s on the latter point that we write today. The Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, with assistance from GetGoingNC.com, has just completed in-depth trail descriptions to help you find and enjoy those completed stretches along Falls Lake and the Eno. In both cases, the trail has been broken down into easy day-hikes, complete with trailhead information, difficulty rating, connecting trails, maps, photos, a description and other helpful information. For those of you who like a detailed account of where you are on the trail, there’s a step-by-step account of each trail provided by FMST volunteer Mark Edelstein.
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 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.
Beavers can be quick to judge.
I realized this Sunday at Falls Lake as I crossed a lengthy boardwalk leading to the footbridge over Little Lick Creek. Normally, Lick Creek is maybe 12 to 15 feet across. But after a good rain, like we’d had the past two days, the surrounding wetlands are flooded. Hence, the lead-up boardwalk on this section of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail in Durham County.
I heard a spectacular splash and looked up to see a radiating circle of disturbed water about 25 yards north of the bridge. At the base of the bridge, on a spit of land that wasn’t submerged, stood a man holding loppers who also was checking out the splash. Moments later the beaver slapped again.
“She’s mad at me,” offered Gregory Scott. Undeservedly so.
Scott is one of the hundreds of volunteers responsible for blazing and maintaining the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the 950-mile work-in-progress that will one day link Clingman’s Dome on the Tennessee line with Jockey’s Ridge