October 7, 2020

 

THE LAUNCH

Doorways can lead many places.  This one, today, leads from a comfortable, warm home in Athens Ga, a town where I know and love and admire many people and have formed wonderful relationships.  The gate itself reminds me of its builder, Don Highfield, woodcarver extraordinaire and a good friend who has moved to Mentone, AL, an artist community on Lookout Mountain.  The gate it is certainly one of the objects I will miss the most from my home. 

The gate, today, is leading away from Athens, toward an as yet unknown destination.   After seven years in Athens, I wanted to go someplace where outdoor recreation plays a much bigger part in the life of the community.   I’m looking for bike trails, lots of ‘em, and as close to my back door as possible.  I want the trails to issue a daily invitation to go wandering or cycling, to plunge into strange woods, to beguile me and bring awe.   

In other words, to replace the four walls of my living room (Thank you, Covid) with daily access to nature, a sense of a bigger participation in the natural world and an escape from the routine world of cars and shops and the rest.  

So I have sold my house without finding the next place to land, and am staying with wonderful friends and family and looking into places that might give me the recreation outlets I’m seeking. 

First stop:  Durham and Chapel Hill, NC. They are great progressive towns known for their diversity.   Terrific trails, I’m told.  One oddly is called The American Tobacco Trail (do we smoke while hiking??) which winds from Durham down to Jordan Lake, a Corps of Engineers lake with lots of recreation opportunities.  

Chapel Hill also has lots of trails that link the community together.  

From Durham, I will head further north to the Washington, DC area, where I hear promising things about Reston, VA.  It’s a planned community from the 70s imagined by developer Robert Simon to have lots of green space, higher population density than was previously allowed by Fairfax County and many miles of trails linking everything together. Simon sold the stake in Carnegie Hall he inherited and invested it into his grand, pioneering plan.

Reston is currently leading the pack among my potential destinations.   Big pluses include ready access to DC’s world-class cultural offerings, many friends and is also an easy bike ride to Great Falls National Park, on the Potomac.   And the area is certifiably blue, politically, another draw.

More to come.   I’m putting this blog together as a personal record of this adventure but also as an invitation to let me know about other places that offer similar temptations.   Let me know what you’ve got in the comments section here.