"When I wake up in the morning," essayist E.B. White once wrote, "I can't decide whether to enjoy the world or improve the world; that makes it difficult to plan the day."

This week I managed to do both things -- or at least hang out with people who did.

On Monday evening, I was invited to host a "get acquainted" dinner for the newly established Mira Foundation USA at the Fair Barn.

Two years ago, Bob Baillie went into the hospital for heart surgery and woke up without his sight. "It was the kind of thing -- no pun intended -- you never see coming," Baillie told me about this time last year, just before we at PineStraw Magazine named Bob one of our Everyday Heroes for 2009.

The experience turned his life inside out. "In more ways than I can possibly explain," he said, "it was the darkest time of my life. Everything you've worked for and accomplished seemed to disappear in an instant."

After Baillie had undergone months of recovery and an understandably deep depression, he and his wife, Lainie, set off for the Mira Foundation in Montreal, a pioneering French-Canadian organization that provides comprehensively trained guide dogs free of charge to the visually handicapped. Unlike other organizations that train dogs to work as companions to the blind, Mira specializes in providing dogs to children.

Mira is where Bob met Devon, a hearty, 3-year-old Bernese Mountain dog that literally knocked him over the first time they met.

"I knelt to say hello to him, and this great big dog literally came over and knocked me off my feet," Bob quietly explained to the crowd at the Fair Barn last Monday night. "We were great pals from that point on."

Thanks to the innovative training and integration that Bob and Devon gained at Mira, they became inseparable companions -- and a frequent sight on the streets of Southern Pines, striding together out to lunch or the post office or just out for the exercise.

"Wherever I wish to go," Bob likes to say, "I just tell Devon, and we are there. He changed my life."

'This Is Going to Happen'

Baillie's good fortune in finding Devon, he explained to the crowd, made him stop and wonder how many people in North Carolina could benefit from a Mira companion dog. The hard numbers greatly surprised him. In North Carolina alone, there are roughly 22,000 blind individuals, 700 of whom are children -- most of whom will never have access to a dog like Devon. In Moore County, there are 350 blind people.

"If they can't see you," one of the local Mira Foundation board members explained to me, "you rarely ever see them, because most have no means to integrate with everyday life. So they stay at home, unseen and out of sight. Thank God Bob Baillie had the vision to try and do something about that."

Late last year, Baillie, a prominent businessman who has a history of donating liberally to Sandhills causes, began liquidating portions of his company to provide the seed money for the first Mira dog-training facility based in this country, an independent, home-grown organization that will use Mira's training technology to produce dogs like Devon for visually handicapped children and adults.

The facility -- which organizers hope will include a developmental resource center for providing greater socialization, work training and cultural access to all unsighted folks and their families -- will be the first of its kind in North Carolina.

"This is going to happen," Bob Baillie told the rapt audience Monday night, leaving few dry eyes in the house after relating his story of an unexpected journey from darkness to light. "You never know what good things can come out of a personal tragedy. I hope you will consider helping us do this."

By week's end, the checks and donations were coming forth in a steady stream.

Now the Enjoyment Part

If the Bob and Devon show qualified as a way for any of us to collectively improve someone else's world, a Thursday morning road trip up to Robbins turned out to be the perfect way to enjoy it.

I've known Robbins since I was a young reporter in Greensboro in the late 1970s, sent out to collect Sunday feature stories in a day-glo orange AMC Pacer that could have been used to triangulate a telecommunications satellite.

As one of my first subjects told me wryly, "Son, I could see you coming at least a mile away." That was Richard Petty, the King of NASCAR and Level Cross.

In those days, pretty Robbins was a classic small Carolina town with a struggling chicken factory and a textile mill on the verge of shutting down. Young people were leaving town and never coming back. As the economy of southern Moore County enjoyed explosive growth and prosperity, Robbins continued its decline. Its movie theaters and familiar stores closed up in downtown, industry went elsewhere, and the poverty rate soared to one of the highest in the state.

Though the town's famous annual Farmer's Day celebration remained a source of community pride, declining rents and rising poverty made Robbins a haven for documented and undocumented Hispanic workers alike. Many of the headlines coming out of this wild and beautiful corner of the county -- like that of the murder of a Hispanic teen last spring -- often give the impression of a fractured community under cultural and economic siege.

Over the past few years, though, something remarkable has been happening in this proud little farm town that refuses to die. A quiet grassroots outdoor renaissance is under way, touching every life in town. Fourteen months ago, owing to a creative 30-page revitalization plan its community leaders developed, Robbins was awarded $600,000 in nonprofit NC-STEP grants to stimulate economic development and revitalize its outmoded sewer and water infrastructures.

A Change of Character

Central to Robbins' future, many feel, is a marketing strategy that emphasizes outdoor recreation and tourism. Gone is the chicken factory that used to spill its guts into Bear Creek. Ditto the polluting outflow pipe from the mill. Both Bear Creek and Deep River it connects with five miles east of town are cleaner than they have been in decades.

I was invited up for a morning canoe trip on Bear Creek with my friend Clare Ruggles of the Northern Moore Family Resource Center, and Randall Moore, who doubles as the owner of popular Deep River Coffee Company and marketing director a resurgent Robbins. Down on the banks of Bear Creek, at a grassy landing under N.C. 705 that was formerly home to a junkyard, I met William and Lynne McDuffie and their daughter, River.

The McDuffies are not only married veterinarians, it turns out, but also nationally ranked canoeists whose enthusiasm for the outdoors in general may be exceeded only by their passion for the waterways of northern Moore County. The six of us set off in canoes and kayaks, with River leading the way up the gently flowing creek.

The rich, tea-colored surface of the water reflected the blue of the autumn sky, and the handsome old trees along the high banks showered us with golden leaves as we paddled by. I half expected to glance over and see Mr. Badger from the Wind in the Willows sunning himself on bank of the stream.

Sounds of town life and highway quickly faded. All we heard were our own pleasant voices, dipping paddles, and the music of leaves and wind.

"The shining water that moves in streams and rivers," said Chief Seattle, "is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors."

As we paddled, these passionate residents of Robbins told me about a host of outdoor events that are making Robbins the new environmental buzz-spot for outdoor family life. Back in September, the first "Recycled Regatta" attracted 22 homemade boats and a host of spectators to the banks of Bear Creek, building on the growing popularity of the town annual "Bearathon" event that attracted more than 100 competitors and 500 spectators last April. Organizers expect those numbers to swell again next spring.

Volunteers using hand tools recently cut six miles of new trails through the beautiful forests that girdle the town, and a recently formed Bear Creek Hiking Club has been signing up new members from all over the county on an almost daily basis.

'A New Pride'

"It's a very good time to be part of this community," George Hayfield, Robbins' new town manager, informed me over pizza and salad after the canoe trip. Hayfield, a veteran outdoorsman and skier, applied at Robbins over a larger city in Maine, in part because of the environmental diversity and enthusiasm of local folks.

We were joined for lunch by Principal Heather Seawell of Robbins Elementary School, where test scores have been steadily on the rise in recent years, and Ben Shamberger, the soccer coach at North Moore High, who succeeded his dad, Michael, as coach and is preparing to take his team to the state playoffs after a turn-around winning season.

"There's definitely something exciting going on here now," Heather Seawell said. "A new pride, a sense of community involvement. I see it every day in the way our children and their parents look at this community. No one feels separate. Folks have begun to appreciate we're all part of a unique place."

Shamberger agreed.

"It makes you feel good to see where this community was and what it is becoming again, thanks to the work of a lot of dedicated people," he said. "It's like I tell my kids -- the harder you practice, the better you play. There was no soccer when I was a kid growing up here. And now we have kids who may wind up playing in college."

There are still a lot of big things to do, said my pal Clare Ruggles, walking me out to my car after lunch.

"But it's heartwarming to see what ordinary people can accomplish by just getting involved with their community," she said. "This town is coming alive with lots of new green ideas."

At the end of the day, with all due respect to my literary hero E.B. White, there's really no dilemma at all between enjoying the world and improving it.

In a season of golden falling leaves, it's heartening to think that, thanks to the generosity of strangers, a blind child or two might soon have a swell dog like Devon -- and to be in a place where people are both improving and enjoying their world one newly carved trail, one reborn stream at a time.

Best-selling author Jim Dodson, writer-in-residence with The Pilot, can be contacted at jasdodson@thepilot.com.