Saturday, August 5: Appalachian Trail from Black Horse Gap on the
Blue Ridge Parkway to the Onion Mountain Overlook and back; 11.2
miles. An easy and pleasant stretch of the trail, with two crossings
of the parkway giving hikers a sense of why the AT builders got a
little steamed when the roadway came through following basically the
same path the trail had cut just a few years earlier. What this hike
does do is provide a strong and repeated sense of what was set aside
back in the 1920s and '30s, when the combination of government
initiative and visionary ideas created the linear spaces we walk and
drive these many decades later.

Saturday, August 19: About five miles to the north and south of North
Topsail Beach, N.C. The most interesting walk was to the north,
where, at the point of the New River Inlet, the power of the sea has
cut away at the coastline to the point that there are several houses
teetering on their pilings near the turn of the sand from coastal to
bayside. Our walks along the ocean are in nearly perfect parallel to
out walks in the woods, with Gail always looking down down down, for
wildflowers/creatures/mushrooms in the woods, and shells/shark
teeth/beach glass at the sea; and her companion looking up up up to
try to identify that mountain over there, that tree right above us in
the woods, and what's happening to the coastline at the sea. On this
day, she was cajoled to follow with me the path of the giant pipe
that was spewing sand oceanside, to learn that said sand was being
sucked out of the bay channel and pumped out in front of where the
houses were listing (and posted with DANGER--NO TRESPASSING signs).
The local paper that day carried a story about factions: Should the
whole of Topsail Island pay for the replenishment, or just those
along the edge of the sea? Passions were as high, with one citizen
noting that the possible division of the island's population was
"just the way the Civil War started."

Saturday, August 26: Appalachian Trail from U.S. 60 east of Buena
Vista northward to Brown Mountain Creek bridge and back: 7.0 miles.
This was a literal field day for The Greatest Day Hiker Of Them All,
as this relatively gentle walk was filled with wildflowers and
mushrooms and--best of all--a creek full of tiny creatures where we
stopped for lunch. Gail's fascination with four or five
crayfish--their strategies and battles and hideouts with the bits of
food she dropped toward them--made her wildflower obsession look like
a nap. And how wonderful to come upon a Virginia stream so full of
life, including several different kinds of fish also responding the
the unexpected arrival of food bits from a giant being with its feet
stuck into the cold flowing water. The Brown Mountain area is also
notable--for he who tends to look up--for its remnants of rock walls,
which are the remains of the brief life of a community of freed
slaves; they settled here after the Civil War and within little more
than half a century were sent on their way again when the Forest
Service came to set aside the land for the likes of us, walking on it
these 70-plus years later.

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