This Land, Your Land

Joe Miller, erstwhile outdoors writer for The News & Observer in Raleigh and author of 100 Classic Hikes in North Carolina, has his new Web site up and running.

Take it Outside NC promises all things outdoors in the Triangle and throughout North Carolina, with content about biking, hiking, paddling and other ways of exploring the outdoors.

The American Hiking Society has a handy state-by-state guide to National Trails Day events and, though the 17th annual National Trails Day is June 6, a quick look at the North Carolina list shows events as early as today and going through the month of June.

A directive released last Thursday by the U.S. Forest Service allows Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to make final decisions about roads in National Forests, but does not mean they will not be built, says the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal.

The Journal says officials of the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Regional office disputed the Associated Press' characterization of the ruling as a reinstatement of a moratorium on road building in forests. "Vilsack's directive did not mention any moratorium, according to Terry McCann, media officer with the Rocky Mountain Region office in Denver," the newspaper says, "'The moratorium language is incorrect,' McCann said in a phone interview Thursday. 'It is not a moratorium.'"

"Don’t desecrate the land in which you live. I, God, live in the same neighborhood with the People of Israel (Numbers 35:34),” the Rev. Rob Fuquay tells Williamson United Methodist Church in Mooresville.

Biblical teachings tell us that we are in charge of the earth; we do not own it, but it is our responsibility to care for our environment, says West Virginia author Betty Dotson-Lewis in the Daily Yonder.

“The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it (Psalm 24:1).”