That's a Lot of Bull!

Pending the results of an MRI on my right knee, we’ll be skipping the more rugged trails for a little while. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be fun things on which to report. North Carolina is full of outdoorsy stuff. Not all of it requires walking in the footsteps of Pocahontas. Or her Carolina counterpart.

Who likes baseball? Or who doesn’t like baseball? It’s the great American pastime. This week’s “trail” led us to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

You’ve seen the movie. Who hasn’t? Recently my oldest was dredging up quotes for her six-year-old’s T-ball debut. We quoted just about the entire “Bull Durham” movie for her.

“You gotta take it one game at a time.”

“I’m the player to be named later.”

“Breathe through your eyelids.”

“Open your presents Christmas morning, NOT on Christmas Eve.”

Okay, that last one isn’t really about baseball, but Crash was on a roll there if you remember the scene.

Anyway, the park has a Blue Monster, similar to the monster of Fenway Park. And there is a replica bull in the outfield who blows smoke through his nostrils when the homeboys hit one out of the park.

The real bull that was used in the movie is hung on the concourse level of the park.

There’s an old-fashioned scoreboard with the runs, hits, etc. changed by hand. A real person hides back there only to pop up when a stat needs to change. What a job that must be! Where do I apply?

The Bulls are the AAA affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays. Evan Longoria played here. And BJ Upton. Right now we have Dan Johnson who we all got to know well during the Rays’ run for the Series in 2008. So we’re right at home when we wear our Rays tee shirts to the games. We aren’t the only ones.

The ballpark is open. No dome, no cover, no controlled climate. Just good old-fashioned outdoor baseball in the summertime. Just like we grew up with. I’ve been to the Trop and seen the Rays. I’ve been to Camden Field to watch the Os. Give me this smaller, more casual venue any time.

It’s a family affair. Each game begins with a local Little League team taking the field with the players.  Many games end with all kids invited to run the bases. Between each inning we’re entertained with such games as Who Has the Worst Hat Hair, Sumo Wrestling, and Finish the Lyric. There’s always some child aged five or so who runs the bases in a competition against Wool E. Bull. The child wins every time despite how far around that is for short little legs.

It’s a fun outing, and at $9 per ticket, it’s one of the more affordable things we can do. If you love the crack of the ball against the bat, the roar of the crowd, the group singing of “Take Me out to the Ball Game,” this is for you.

Just another reason to be delighted to be in North Carolina.

Happy Trails!

Of Birds and Beatles

“I hear a symphony.....”

I have this old football injury to my knee, so we went for a shorter trail this week, just barely more than a mile.

Ok, I didn’t really injure my knee playing football, but it makes a more interesting story than saying I just turned it funny when I was getting on the bed.  See?  Football injury.

As I’ve mentioned before, Cary is crisscrossed with miles and miles of Greenway. This week we took the Symphony Lake Greenway. This circles a small lake and runs alongside the Koko Booth Amphitheatre where the North Carolina Symphony performs in the summer, along with many other fine shows such as Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Huey Lewis and the News, both coming up in the near future. Guess which one I already have tickets for?

But back to the trail. The wooded area features loblolly pines, alder and beech. A variety of ferns fill the undergrowth with a rich green. We managed to find a few wildflowers along the way as well. A small arched footbridge crosses Swift Creek.

The trail is asphalt, not my favorite kind of trail, but it is easier to walk on than the more rugged woodsy trail, and given the football injury, was probably a better choice this week. You will, however, be sharing this trail with a multitude of waterfowl. Not to mention their...umm...production. So step carefully. Most of our fellow hikers were Canada geese, but we did see a stately old swan and a tall egret.

We started at about seven-thirty on a Saturday morning. There were only a handful of other people on the circuit, but the crowd was increasing as we neared the end. Probably later in the day, it’s quite populated. It was a pretty day. The surrounding woods reflected easily on the lake surface.

We did return to the venue later that evening for the NC Symphony, featuring the Music of Paul McCartney. We took a picnic with us, but opted to pay the extra $5 for a table. And good thing, because that area was covered when the downpour came about a half-hour before show time. But the skies cleared quickly enough, and the show was great. We danced, we clapped, we sang along. The gentleman who portrays Sir Paul has been doing it since the 70s. You would think in all that time, he’d learn to play the bass left-handed. But it was still a great show.

Being that the date was June 18, the second (and final) encore was appropriately enough, “Birthday.” It would have been Paul McCartney’s 69^th birthday. 

Had he lived.

But this is a blog about Trails, not about the irony that Ringo would be the last Beatle standing. And it was a lovely trail. Long enough to get a nice walk in, but short enough to avoid further injury. And we enjoyed the waterfowl. 

Happy Trails!

Back in Time

“History is the memory of time, the life of the dead and the happiness of the living.”

        ---Captain John Smith

Sometimes our trails may take us backwards, back to a time before we know. Before the land was tamed and then destroyed by progress, by development, by careless disregard of our Mother Earth.

This week our trail took us to Colonial Virginia. When I visited in 1975, I was more struck by the emotion of Jamestown than by the reproduction in Williamsburg, although there is much to see and be moved by in the Colonial town. But having recently learned that I descend from pre-Revolutionary Irish settlers along the James River, I was most looking forward to my revisit of Jamestown this trip.

Jamestown owes its existence to two very real and well-documented people, Captain John Smith and the Indian Princess Pocahontas. Whether Pocahontas begged her father to spare the life of Captain Smith depends on whose version of history you read. Captain Smith’s own memoirs recount the story that we’ve heard since elementary school. The Indians who lived on the Virginia land say that she did no such thing.

Regardless, her mingling with the English men who settled on Indian land promoted unity between the two peoples (sometimes) and helped the little settlement survive. That she was held captive for a time is denied by neither side. That she married the Englishman John Rolfe is fact. It’s probably American spirit and nature to romanticize the legend and make it into a happily-ever-after story.

As the last time I visited, I feel that I tread on sacred ground when I walk along the James. It’s a short path, meandering from the waterfront to encircle the ruins that have been found there. In effort to preserve the actual foundations, modern brickwork has been laid atop them to mark the boundaries of buildings.  So one does not actually see small homes where English settlers scratched out a living. But the suggestion of the buildings is enough (for me, at least) to imagine all that I do not see.

No matter what happened here – and we will never know for sure – it is certain that Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement. And as such Jamestown is the birthplace of our nation. The spot from which all English civilization grew.

It’s a pretty and pleasant path, despite the summer heat that drenched us yesterday. We still enjoyed the quiet, the small breeze, the gentle lapping of the James against the shore.

Very nearby is the spot where the ruins of a 1608 Glasshouse have been found which would have served the settlement, producing all manner of glass items. The path leading to the ruins is very short but really nice with a canopy of trees providing welcome relief from the heat and sun. Again, it’s quiet and peaceful.

It was not a long nor strenuous trail we hiked this week. But sometimes it really is the destination and not the journey. Discover history. Visit Jamestown. It is for certain that Pocahontas lived there. When you walk along the James, you walk in her footsteps.