Back in them hollers

With the clay courts at the Farm closed yet again because of cold, and with another rain coming on today, extending the Ireland-like boggishness of the Piedmont yet further, I had no choice but to go for a long run again yesterday. Using a recently thought up trick, I started off by going to the bottom of Tadley and going straight up the thing, both because I know the steepness of the hill is intrinsically good for me and every way, but also because it warms me up more or less right at the door to offset the cold of the day, as opposed to needing to run for a mile and change before the body builds enough calorie-burn momentum to do the trick.

I ended up over on Burlage Circle and decided to drop down onto the OWASA easement along Bolin Creek. Aside from the paved trail that runs from the Community Center to Airport and from there on to wherever it terminates now, Umstead or wherever (don't really care for paved trails), there is a beautiful little trail system that runs back there below the Caswell/Cumberland neighborhood across from Phillips back into the hollows behind Mt Bolus. I have never fully plumbed the depths of these trails or, frankly, figured them out.

So I went there, and I followed a trail up a ravine that dropped me up at the top of Mount Bolus, near Cedar. I wasn't sure which direction to go, so I went right, and within a hundred yards there was a trail going off the other side of the road. I could see in the woods that there were lawn chairs looking out over the view, and when I got out to where they were I could see that they were looking out over the shopping center where Flyleaf Books is towards Franklin Street and UNC. An entirely new view! I had never looked at downtown from that perspective.

By the time I had taken a trail down that dumped me out on Bolinwood, I was pretty pooped and I realized I needed to find the most efficient way home, so I took the paved Bolin Creek trail to Franklin and cut across the WCHL field on the Booker Creek trail to get home. Probably 7-8 miles all told.

Anybody not from Chapel Hill is by now bored shitless from all that detail, my apologies, this was for locals and the future me. But the main point is how exciting it is to keep finding new things in my home town. It's really quite awesome, and another of the gifts of the lockdown, for those of us fortunate enough to have the material stability and inclination to search out and appreciate them.