About a week after tromping through the muddy woods, I find myself back in an urban oasis, where the wonders of modern tech have locked in a comfortable 72 in the house that makes drinking a hot Earl Grey in the middle of the Southern Summer comfortable and pleasant.

But there’s an itch I need to scratch, and it’s not just from the bug bites and “poison whatever” in my back yard.  So, I wake up earlier than I need to and throw all the gear and point the whip northwest.  Luckily, though I live in one of the fastest growing cities in the country, there’s a little spot not far from here that’s going to give me what I need today.

The trails are not overwhelming.  They don’t lead to any breathtaking waterfalls or awe-inspiring vistas.  But they are enough, enough for me to run under the trees and hear the quiet crunch of dirt under my feet, enough for me to push my lungs and legs.  It’s a system check.  I haven’t run since Tampa.  I haven’t run a trail in close to a month.  If one of my summer goals is to maintain a running baseline on the trails,   here’s the step where that journey of a thousand miles begins.

Shady Trail is first, a loping two-track horse trail if there ever were one.  I’m running above pace.  I’m checking all the muscles to see if carrying a pack or hiking in Chacos has caused me any long-term problems.  All systems go.  After a mile, I cross the road: Beechwood Loop.  More technical.  A loop over roots, down a hill, around a gully, and back up. Pace slows as I pick over roots.  I’m thinking these are great walking trails, but nobody’s stupid enough to be out here in the summer heat.  Then I run up and spook a couple of people on the bridge.  Back, back, back up the hill, step by root by step.  Soon, it’s on to the Treasure Trove, whose trailhead is moved, but is still one of my favorites, loping wide trails over roots through a high, open tree canopy that allows a wide view as I trot through the trees.  Soon, I’m back on Shady in full sunlight, back across the road.  Climbing done, the finish near, I open up the last gear, floating at times down the trail.  Cut right.  Up a hill.  Cut left.  On the pavement.  Run over.  

The best part of running out here is that when I’m done, I throw my kayak off the Honda, throw it in the lake and paddle, paddle, paddle.  At first, the run’s got me like, “maybe I’ll get in a half hour.”  But the day is beautiful, and I settle into a groove, cruising up the south channel of Mtn. Island Lake, chomping on pistachios.  In an hour, I’ve made it to the NC 16 bridge.

The current seems to be pulling me further, so I choose to turn it around and explore the coves on the way back.  The south side is more developed, but I spot some possible “park and hammock” spots.  However, it’s clear that the more secluded spots are ones that someone’s looking to build a dock or personal beach on someday.  Lots of “Warnings” and “Private Property” near the beginnings of worn paths. So for today on the coves, it’s me and the herons.

The water is high after storms the last two weeks.  After about 30 minutes, I’m at one of my favorite swimming spots, but the beach where I usually park the boat (and definitely don’t swim, because that is against the county rules) is but a small shelf of sticks.

I park and sit on a large root.  I sit and hear the morning roll in, the waking of the sun and the song of birds and insects yawning to life.  The sun warms the top of the water, leaving the bottom cold, and each time I re-emerge, the openness of the lake with its teeming life greets me.  Swimming pools are great and clean and neat, but there’s nothing like this fish impression to cool off after the morning’s paddle.

Come August, these moments will be difficult to find. I spend quite a bit of my job hermetically sealed in a third floor classroom, and as a teacher I worry that we are training students to be people who are satisfied with a limited life of indoor living, what I heard one podcaster call a “zoo animal” existence, satiated and reduced by limited movement.   I love books, and enjoy the quiet sitting and reading as well, but one I’ve been reading recently, Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods (AP 2013 for you LangNerds), is playing in the back of my mind as I drink in all the sense data around me.  Louv cites a study that differentiates between “direct focused attention” and “fascination”.  The first is task-oriented (read this passage, write this essay, do this math problem) to focus narrowly at the exclusion of all distractions (like school).  The second is to have the senses overwhelmed, as is often the case in a natural setting.  While the first kind seems the necessary to the A+ student, productive citizen type, the second type is necessary to refresh the capacities of the first, lest the first get weaker and weaker.  In the first type, the mind tries to exclude distracting stimuli.  It is a muscle that weakens, and—according to the cited study—causes irritation, exhaustion, and reduced performance in kids.  The second type allows the senses to be overwhelmed, to ponder the infinite possibilities of the universe, to take it all in, therefore allowing the first type to regenerate and re-focus with newfound vigor.


I’m going to follow the science on this one (though not in a Mike Pence type of way).  I’m going to undertake the delving into nature as my own summer maintenance and regeneration.  I wish I could bottle up this wisdom and figure out how to use it in my classroom.  But I don’t know how that works just yet.

But for today and for the summer, it is also a thought I need for myself.  Absent the structure of a day’s work, ideas come and go as I churn and churn over the water.  On my left in a small cove, a group of green young canoers struggle across the water in an area populated by hawks and blooming underwater plants.  From a distance, they seem a mixture of frustration in getting the boats to go and fascination at the surroundings.  Soon,

I’m passing what I call “Frog Rock”, a convenient rest point, it seems, for teenagers to come and tag a rock with messages of love and sorrow, a short paddle from a nearby public dock..  By the time I’m back on the shore, it’s just getting warm enough to be less than bearable.  The noon sun shimmers across the water, igniting every ripple of water as far as I can see.