I know how to take a day off.
This past Monday I finally cried uncle, ignored the workload, headed out. In the evening, I did a 6-mile hike of the Falls Lake Trail with my buddy Alan. Our first after-hours hike of the season (we take a hiatus during the steamy summer months); it proved a good kickoff for the night hiking season.
That alone would have made it a good day.
Hana and I approach the bridge underr Old Weaver Trail Road, about two miles into our trip.
Earlier, though, Hana, my 13-year-old daughter, and I took the Old Town Loon 138T for a paddle on the Beaverdam section of Falls Lake. Beaverdam is the best paddling on Falls Lake because motor boats (all but the 5 hp trolling kind) are prohibited. No jarring noise, no rollercoaster wakes. On a windy day you may catch some fetch on the more exposed sections, but those are few. It's almost guaranteed good paddling.
I quickly realized that a fall paddle on Beaverdam has become an inadvertent ritual going back four years. In 2004, I'd set a goal to cycle 5,000 miles. A good goal, though it soon became consuming. To make it happen, I needed to ride 96 miles a week (96.15, to be exact). That can be difficult from November through early April, when daylight is at a premium and after work rides are nigh impossible. That meant six Daylight Savings months of extra mileage, generally between 130 and 150 miles a week. That left little time for anything else. To rack up some miles, I did Cycle North Carolina: Nearly 500 miles during a week that began in Sparta in the Blue Ridge Mountains and ended seven days later in Oriental, on the coast. On that last day, somewhere past Aurora, I rode past a small, swampy creek. I slowed, looked into its murky depths and thought: I'd rather be paddling. Three days later, I was: at Beaverdam. I've been back every October since.
Beaverdam Creek is somewhere back beyond those trees.
The first two miles of this paddle is open water. Pleasant, but not remarkable. It's once you pass under the bridge on Old Weaver Trail Road that the trip gets interesting. There's another half mile or so of diminishing open water. A great blue heron escorts you in 30-yard increments, a black duck (a scoter?) makes a fervent takeoff, a white heron passively stands its (wet) ground.
Beaverdam was intended to filled to the 249-foot level (that's feet above sea level). In my past three paddles, it had been well below that. Today, though, is different.
"It's high," I say to a fellow we pass in a red Wilderness Systems kayak.
"Look at the water level," he says, pointing to a grove of nearby willows. A tropical storm or two in September had elevated the level another three feet. Still, the lake is above 252 feet, three feet above normal, perhaps five feet higher than I've paddled it before. The extra water means we can explore farther. All the way to Beaverdam Creek, where this segment of the lake begins?
We see a tributary to our right: Smith Creek, perhaps. We wind through willows and the gray trunks of partially submerged trees that have long since given up on leafing out. We can hear the occasional car, which means we're close to SR 1721. But it's about the time we hear that traffic that our water gives out — or at least in the volume necessary to paddle farther.
Bummed that I'm perhaps less than a half mile from Beaverdam Creek? Nope. Just gives me reason to keep my new tradition alive next October.
We'll be back, Beaverdam.
