I love hiking in the fall, especially down here, in The South! I am not quite as bothered by snakes as I usually am in the summer, and the (still) warm temperatures make for a pleasant excursion - winter hikes can be chilly, even around these parts.
I also like fall hikes because, for some reason, there are not many people out. I guess there are so many fall festivals, harvest gatherings, Oktoberfests that people are not much for solitude in the wild. It’s a quiet, peaceful time and you feel like you have the trails for yourself. You and just a couple of random loners like you, being walked by their dogs.
Fall is the best time for pictures, too. The colors are popping, even when they are not 100% in full peak - like it happens to be the case right now in the area we live - in the middle of the Tarheel state.
Leaves float in the air like butterflies: they catch my eye on their way downward and I turn with a startle trying to catch the creature only to figure out that it’s not a winged beauty afterall, but a dead, dry leaf. Pretty nonetheless.
The air is dusty and crisp with dead-leaf smell. Bath and Body Works have this candle called something like “Leaves” and it’s no surprise that they thought about bringing that to the home. They smell like lumber, fire, warm, soft sweaters, and mulled wine all wrapped up into one another. They smell like what a cozy night in front of the fireplace feels like.
The light is soft and it’s almost hard to focus the camera - it’s not the sharp air of the spring or that of a bright summer morning - it’s dimmed, like a wispy hair of a on woman; the lines of things are blurry and you feel the need to increase your contrast when you process the pictures to get some clarity.
We picked a couple of spots to take in nature this time of the year during this past week, and they were very different but of course beautiful in their own right.
The first one, Reservoir Park in Southern Pines, is a 2 mile loop around a lake, the trail flanked by tall Southern pines. Since the forest was mostly piny, the colors were not as bright as you’d expect in the fall but a few bright pops were peeking from here and there. It’s almost a completely flat trail - wide, groomed, sandy in parts, very comfortable. The trail makes it for a nice walk where you could just get lost in taking it easy and taking everything in - the lake, clear and calm; the fish jumping out of the water catching lazy flies resting on the water for dinner; the ducks, lazily drifting by, the dragon flies (still!) mating, and the trees, in all their height and glory.
The lake at Reservoir Park in Southern Pines: it is almost completely round with a 2 mile trail around it and views of the water from every corner.
A duck was drinking water but it looked like she was gurgling ...
As the name suggests it: Southern Pines is full of ... pines. These beauties surround you anywhere in Reservoir Park.
Another favorite during autumn (and winter) hikes are the berries: there are so many of them, in various colors, to remind you that all is not dead, after all!
The trail at Reservoir Park - pretty flat and wide - and some beautiful colors popping from among the pines.
Is it a leaf in the air? Or on the water?! Who knows or cares - it has given up for this season ...
We could never figure out what "fruits" these are (persimmon, maybe?!), but the tree in the picture below was loaded with them. They looked like tomatoes and if you didn't look too carefully they got lost in the overall fall color of the whole tree. So cool!
Your "typical", if there is such a thing, fall-colors picture at the entrance of Reservoir Park.
The second hike we ventured on was the loop trail at Raven Rock State Park which takes you all the way up to Raven Rock, on the banks of the Cape Fear River. The trail goes up and down - not quite as flat as the first one - and it’s full of trees of all sorts - oaks, and maples, and pines - and others we could not identify. We kept seeing these nuts that looked like pecans all over the forest floor - we still don’t know what they were ...
The two main points of attraction on this trail are the “overlook” - from where you can see the river from up high on the hill. There is something filled with tranquility and perspective, seeing a river meander between hills from up-above, carving the shape of the world, that I always find fascinating.
The other landmark on this trail is the Raven Rock itself: a 150ft massive rock nested in the cliffs by the river. You come up to its tippy-top on the trail and you have to climb down these steep stairs to see it from the bottom. It’s a breath-taker, for sure, but so worth the trek.
Once you’re down at the bottom it feels like you just descended in the belly of the earth - everything is so quiet and peaceful, and lost. The river is calm, almost like a lake, and there are no sounds. No creatures. Huge, enormous, knotty roots spread along the side of the rock, barely clutching on to the soil, almost floating above earth. Trees taller than the 150ft rock itself doing a frail balancing act on these roots like ballerinas on toe points.
In fact, the entire trail in this park is covered with stone-like, dry, knotty roots which makes it treacherous to walk on: you feel with every step like you’re going to slip and fall - the roots are covered by newly fallen leaves and it makes for a slippery, unstable-footing journey. But again - so worth it.
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