ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
When NPR correspondent Brian Mann goes on a reporting trip, he's always on the lookout for wild places just to escape for a few hours. He found one in the western corner of North Carolina. Here's his audio postcard from a summer day in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
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BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: It's late afternoon, and I'm climbing into the Linville Gorge Wilderness. As I'm starting, it's just decorated with mountain laurel - delicate, pink flowers. It's like the entire trail was decorated for a wedding.
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MANN: The sun is hot, the trail dusty and steep in places. Birds cartwheel around me, close enough to touch.
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MANN: I love escaping like this on a workday. Sometimes it's a city park, sometimes a public garden. One minute, you're at your desk, on the job, the next minute, you're in a place like this.
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MANN: I've come around where there's just no human footprint at all. It just - it's wild.
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MANN: When I stop to catch my breath, I realize there are bees everywhere foraging in the mountain laurel.
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MANN: I hike on, sometimes using my hands as I scramble over rock. The dust smells like summer.
The trail has led me up to balconies of rock that look over the gorge below, and there are vast cliff faces - they look kind of like old castle walls, really.
The Linville Gorge is vast - nearly 12,000 rugged acres on U.S. Forest Service land, halfway between Charlotte and Knoxville. Places like this can seem intimidating, but this trail is relatively quick and fairly easy - just a couple of steep parts. It's the kind of thing you could do on your lunch hour.
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MANN: I do think this kind of dive into wildness is really good - to just move and to smell and feel, you know, spider webs touching my face and the sounds of the birds.
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MANN: It's getting on towards evening now, and the light is golden, and it's so still up here.
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MANN: Brian Mann, NPR News, in the Linville Gorge Wilderness in North Carolina.
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