The Tar Heel Outdoorsman

You don't need much to get out and enjoy the natural world.  Really, you don't need anything at all.  Just take a walk in the woods and breathe in that fresh air.  Having said that, a few items expand your range into nature exponentially.  A simple canoe is one of those things.   Pick one up cheap on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, or even Walmart.  You don't need anything fancy.  One person can easily lift a less than 15 footer, especially made of ABS or Royalex or other light materials, and about any vehicle can carry that size boat on the roof.  

It was fall in the foothills.  It was dry and clear and the sweet-cool of the morning refreshed you.  Cool, but not cold.  A good fall day.   I'd loaded up the canoe from the coast and headed west to the in-laws' place, on the banks of the Yadkin River, outside of Winston-Salem.   There's something about a smallmouth bass on a fly rod.  Maybe it's the strength of the fish, the strength of their pull against the current.  Or maybe it's because they're the fish that really taught me about fly fishing.  My original fly fishing quarry.  In all honesty, smallmouth caught me, not the other way around, back on the banks of Rapidan River in Virginia.  I've been hooked ever since.   I met a man once, while trout fishing in the mountains, who claimed the Yadkin held the best smallie fishing in North Carolina.  Better than the New River, even the French Broad.  Maybe not in numbers, but in size.  I'll be honest, I...

                                              It was mid-June, and the lawyer-quiz was not far off.  Sometimes, you need a break, to clear your head, to get some clean(er) oxygen to the brain, to keep that thing inside your skull from turning to mush, jumbled with actus reus  and fee simple subject to a condition subsequent  and the  rule against perpetuities  and the elements of common law burglary or larceny and d uty-breach-causation damages and ... on and on and on.  So, trusty Old Town canoe on the truck, I drove a mere five minutes from my cookie-cutter apartments to a little bit of public land, near where I had often duck-hunted in my undergrad years.  I'd fished there before, and never had much luck, but in a different area, and by foot, not by boat.  As much as I'd like to describe it mor...

We're starting by backtracking. Not quite a year ago, a group of eight friends and I went on what would be an abnormal spring break for a many college kids.  One that didn't consist of crushing beers and getting sunburned on a warm beach. What we did was a 33 mile float down the Rio Grande, through the Boquillas Canyon in Big Bend National Park.  Flew into El Paso and rented cars.  Drove five hours to Terlingua, got to Far Flung Outdoor Center. It was dark when we got there, so we set up our tents in the parking lot.  In the chill of the next morning, we rented four canoes and hit the road.