45th anniversary of NC's Mountains-to-Sea Trail photo dump

This September is the 45th anniversary of North Carolina's Mountains-to-Sea Trail. Friends of the MST has encouraged folks to celebrate by hiking 45 MST miles this month. As I hadn't been away from Durham since July 31, I took this as motivation to hike out of town.

Part I: "to," Saturday Sept. 10

My plan was to start hiking the second weekend of September, with a section of the MST in Doughton Recreation Area, but hurricane Earl, brewing far off in the Atlantic, had other plans, drenching much of NC in rain. Yet the forecast in Durham was decent until that Saturday afternoon--so plans switched to an Eno River hike instead, from the Pleasant Green access to Penny's Bend. Friends joined me for the first 5 miles. The weather held up until the last half hour, but it was fun to get drenched knowing it would just be for a short time. Thanks to S for providing shuttle service.

Shrooms were abundant on the trail. Size 10.5W women's sneaker included for scale:

The fireplace mantel was decorated for some special occasion:

 

View from the bridge over Guess Road:

Wildflowers were abundant--some native and some not...

This spider lily isn't native to the U.S.

Thanks, blazes!

This copperhead was sheltering its head from the rain. Since it couldn't see me, obviously I couldn't see it. 

Part II: "Sea," Friday September 16-Sunday September 18

The next Friday, I headed to Ocracoke. My original plan was to drive to the north end of Ocracoke on Saturday and walk back to Ocracoke village, then walk back to the north end on Sunday to pick up the car. But I arrived late afternoon on Friday, and how can one resist a walk on the beach? I ended up covering almost 11 miles that evening, from town to Ramp 67 and back again, so I sucked it up and completed the rest of the island on Saturday morning (Pony Pen access to the north end ferry dock, back south to Ramp 67, and then back to Pony Pen). On Sunday, I treated myself to a mostly non-MST walk to the south end of the island, where I finally found the sand dollar I had been searching for for a friend.

Friday evening:

Sea turtle nests abounded:

Saturday morning:

See the sun just coming up on the horizon? 

Looking south...

My rule on the beach is that if plastic and I make eye contact, I have to pick it up. Most of the trash I encountered this time was limited to the road toward the ferry dock at the north end of the island. I'm not sure it's correct to call this a "bright side," but generally the beach provides clean, empty plastic bags along with the rest of the trash, so after I deposited my heading-north trash in the restroom garbage can, the beach said "hey, here's another bag for the return trip."

One less straw to get stuck in a sea turtle's schnozz, and one
less plastic bag to be mistaken for a jellyfish, at least for now. 

Hope springs eternal

I started my walk north at low tide. I finished the last stretch--south from Pony Pen to Ramp 67 and back again--near high tide, which meant less traction and steeper sloping beach. It. Was. A. Slog. But that slog meant I had covered almost the entire length of the island twice in two days.  

All that was left was the southern end on...

Sunday morning (mostly non-MST):

Here's the only whole sun-bleached sand dollar I found the entire weekend: 

South end of Ocracoke: ocean to the left, sound to the right:

I found a few whole, fuzzy, unbleached sand dollars too:

If you can't tell by now, I'm a fan of reflections:

This shell was still occupied:

Sunday afternoon (back to MST):

The beach colors on Hatteras were noticeably different from the beach colors on Ocracoke, at least for the mile south of Ramp 27, where I decided to take a break from driving.

Near Ramp 27, I encountered the remains of the George A. Kohler, built in 1919, wrecked in 1933. A history of the ship is here.

More orange-browns than on Ocracoke

Part III: "Mountains," Saturday September 24

By the end of my Ocracoke trip, I had reached the 45-mile goal and then some, but had only covered the "Sea" and "to" parts of the trail (poor Eno River, reduced to a preposition!). So yesterday, S and I drove west to Doughton Recreation Area for a 12.5 mile "Mountains" out-and-back hike. The forecast was "partly sunny" with a 10% chance of rain; thus we learned about mountain micro-climates, and were grateful we had both brought rain jackets with us.

Of all the stretches of MST I hiked this month, the stretch in Doughton Recreation Area was by far the best marked:

Given enough time, trees will eat anything:

Autumn! Lots of yellow leaves on the ground, but not many red ones yet...

Brinegar cabin (built 1880) interpretive exhibit:

When I took this photo, I was seeing the ladybug...

...not the aphids:

Best blaze ever, yip yip yipyipypyip:

Doughton gives Bavaria a run for its lone-tree-on-a-hill money:

Carly came with us, of course:

ZYX

Long ago, after listening to a fellow grad student discuss this aspiration, I decided that like him, I should also learn to fluently recite the alphabet backwards. At the time, I gave it enough of a try to realize it was harder than I thought it would be, and then I forgot about it for the next 2.5 decades.

Gentle readers, I'm pleased to announce that I finally realized this goal this past Sunday on a roadtrip from Ocracoke to Durham. Am I a better person for it? Oh, probably.

Because I think everyone should want to be able to recite the alphabet backwards, I share my strategy below.

The effort began a week ago while I was out for a jog. I don't jog often, but when I do, I tend to think my most articulate, most brilliant thoughts, interspersed with long stretches of counting to 100 over and over and over again. I usually count in triple meter, so I can keep track of which set of 100 I'm on by noticing where the accents fall and paying attention to whether those numbers are divisible by three or have a remainder of 1 or 2. I can't explain why I do this, I just do.

I am consequently very experienced at counting while running. 

For backwards alphabetting, my grad school compatriot had recommended starting by reciting a number alongside each letter: 1A, 2B, 3C, 4D, 5E, etc. So I practiced that for a while. Then I switched things up and practiced A1, B2, C3, D4, E5, etc.

I discovered some handy mnemonics en route. Eight eight-ch (8H). Twen-tee tee. V is 22--because there are two branches in the letter. W is 23--because if you tip a W on its side, it looks like the numeral 3. X is 24--because it depicts four quadrants. G is 7 and Q is 17--because the European way of writing the number 7 has a horizontal crossbar across the diagonal line, and the serif on a capital G and the tail of the Q are kind of like crossbars.

Even though I count in threes when I jog, in the US we learn the alphabet in quadruple meter, so I counted letters in groups of four. I memorized the letters divisible by 4, so I had landmarks with which to recognize if I had gotten off track: D4, H8, L12, P16, T20, X24. 

Then I tried putting the accents on the downbeats of groups of four letters, and discovered something I had never noticed before about vowels: A1, E5, I9, M13, Q17, U21, Y25. You might be thinking "yo, M and Q are not vowels"--but I'll note that the only vowel missing from the list, O (15), is the average of M (13) and Q (17). Nifty.

Four days later, while roadtripping on Sunday, I worked on counting down from 26Z to 1A. Other than repeatedly getting the order VU wrong and occasionally forgetting to include G, this didn't take long to learn. And then it was time to drop the numbers.

I blame the Alphabet Song for making it so hard to recite the alphabet backwards: we learn the letters in the direction A to Z, reinforce that order with a melody, and there's no going back[wards]. So to combat Alphabet-Song indoctrination, the next step was obviously to set the backwards alphabet to music (click image to enlarge):

Naturally, I sang this a few dozen times, and the ending made me laugh a every time, which made the miles pass more quickly.

Then I wondered whether the tempo of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik might be too quick for those newer to backwards-alphabetting; perhaps a slower melody would be more helpful. It needed to be something familiar, a tune most USAmericans would know... and suddenly I thought of my friend Leslie, who found herself in Salzburg this summer on a bus full of Sound of Music fans who nostalgically burst into song. The choice of melody was immediately clear (click to enlarge):

I regret that I didn't start working on this when E was little, so he could have grown up singing ZYX, but maybe I'll cross paths with a bunch of musically thirsty toddlers someday.

Those of you who know more about rock music and Googling than I do probably know They Might Be Giants has already addressed this crucial issue. (Still, I think Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Edelweiss offer less mournful melodies.)