By Claire Ferris (’21)
During social distancing, hiking can be calming. .
Despite having a myriad of ways in which we can communicate with each other without physical interaction — FaceTime, Snapchat, and Zoom are enjoying colossal success right now — it seems easy to feel disconnected from the world. Though we can still talk to our friends and spam them with 8 ball on Game Pigeon, we no longer have the luxury of collectively lamenting the stress of our next math test while sitting cross-legged in the Upper School hallways, visibly exhausted. But interacting with anyone — acquaintances and strangers alike — is now forbidden, and I’ve found myself turning daily to Cary’s greenways and Umstead State Park to evoke a sense of connectedness to both the people around me and my home itself, Cary.
The Black Creek Greenway — it’s nearest to my house — first started construction in 1989, and the town of Cary has adding segments ever since, with the most recent addition made in 2013. Today, the greenway has a continuous length of 7.1 miles, connecting the Old Reedy Creek Trailhead to Bond Park. The town of Cary has exciting plans for the future of the trail, too: eventually, the Black Creek Greenway will be connected to the White Oak Greenway, which will connect to the American Tobacco Trail. Though the Greenway represents national interconnectedness as a part of the East Coast Greenway, a system that extends from Florida to Maine, the true beauty of the trail is how well it interlaces the fabric of the town of Cary. It connects to schools, parks, dog parks, boat houses, recreational areas, neighborhoods, stores — and does so largely clad in lush forest.
At the top of the Black Creek Greenway lies a parking lot bustling with cars owned by cyclists, runners, and athletes alike. Separating the Greenway from Old Reedy Creek Road and the bike trails that run around Lake Crabtree, a chain-link gate prefaces the entrance to William Bradley Umstead State Park, an oasis of nearly 5,600 acres. The land itself was opened for settlement in 1774 via land grants, when the forests were then cleared for agriculture. Its attendants soon failed the land, though, by way of poor cultivation practice, and caused soil erosion in the area. After witnessing ineffectual attempts at continued farming during the Great Depression, federal and state agencies united to purchase the land together. Building camps with both day-use and picnic facilities, the agencies were able to improve the land and open it to the public in 1937.
Despite not going at precisely the same time each day, I always feel like I pass the same people, my own greenway regulars, during my excursions through Cary. Perhaps they’re venturing out on their daily state-sanctioned walk, reluctantly spending their free time with their families and ecstatic pets. Perhaps they’re overjoyed at the prospect of finally, finally! leaving that Zoom call and escaping into their thoughts, delicately aided by their melodies of choice. Sometimes, though, those people are even fellow CA students reveling in the peace and entertainment that the greenways provide.
For Xavier DeSouza (’21), “…being unsocially cooped up for a lengthy period of time, whilst altruistically preventing the spread of COVID-19, is mentally and physically detrimental; thus, it has been exceedingly invaluable to go for runs, walks, and bikes on the Greenway and through Umstead Park. It has additionally been plausible to perpetually remain at least six feet away from other pedestrians. A particular boon has been occasionally coming across familiar faces..”, though he states that he “dutifully refrain[s] from drawing near.”
Sarah Zhao (’22) also expressed her gratitude for the greenway system: “I’ve been using them a lot to walk my puppy every day and we like to take him to the hiking trails that surround Lake Crabtree.”
Because CA students are spread throughout the triangle and into surrounding towns such as Holly Springs, Garner, Apex, and Wake Forest, my story about the mere 7 miles of greenway on which I like to escape the “Coronacation” may seem inconsequential to many of you who feel a disjoint between you and your Cary Academy peers. But I am as connected to you as ever, our own individual stretches of greenway acting as vessels of a larger system that indicates our individual hometowns live and breathe together through the actions of their citizens, even when we feel so very far away from each other. If you ever start to miss the short gray carpet of the Upper School, and — more importantly — the friends with which you’ve spent years of your life walking on it, put on your running shoes, find a greenway, and remember: we’re more connected than we think, and not just through technology and social media.