I walked part of the future Bolin Creek Greenway through Carrboro yesterday in advance of Monday night's Greenways Commission meeting.

When the controversy over whether to pave the path between Estes Drive Extension and Homestead Road erupted, associate editor Dave Hart and I didn't get it. Paving the Chapel Hill greenway hadn't detracted from people's enjoyment of the scenery, and paving would clearly improve access.

But the more you report, the more you learn. So here are thoughts from my walk with Linda Haac, of Save Bolin Creek. You can read her guest column, by the way, in today's Chapel Hill News.

The most important thing I learned is the path through Carrboro isn't a single entity. In spots, the span between the railroad tracks and creek (flowing briskly after this past week's rain) is barely wide enough to fit the proposed 10-foot pavement, much less the clearing that would adjoin it on either side. 

We stopped on the footbridge by Haac's home, near where Dry Gulch Creek meets up with Bolin. Here the public access comes within feet of her neighborhood's children's playground. We saw joggers, a mother and her children and people with their dogs. I asked Haac whether the paving issue is aesthetic or environmental. I asked what having this space the way it is now means to her.

"I like to breathe," she said.

I looked up from my camera. She said when people come down to the creek, they breathe more deeply. Though you can hear the rustle of Estes Drive just over the ridge, you truly are in nature.

There are already routes north along Pathway Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, she said. If government puts pavement along the creek, it will have shattered that escape forever.

Or will it? We'll continue to report on the Bolin Creek controversy, I hope, with more perspectives and information about its potential impact on stream quality and the life that depends on it. But in the end, the unmeasurable may be just as important as the facts.

Click here to read Linda's column.