Harkers Island

Today we decided to visit Harkers Island, which lies due east of Atlantic Beach on what they call the "Back Sound."  It is small, unincorporated, and quite picturesque.  We came here last year on the recommendation of Martha's Aunt and had a little picnic on National Park Service land adjacent to the ferry to Cape Lookout.  The sea was too rough today for a ferry to Shackleford Island, where the famous Shackleford ponies (related, I think, to the Banker Ponies farther north that we know in Corolla) roam freely and the Cape Lookout lighthouse stands tall; we may come back on a day when wind gusts are not 30 mph!

We had lunch at the Fish Hook Grill,a little hole-in-the-wall place highly-rated by Tripadvisor, where they served up their signature, delicious Hatteras-style clam chowder (clear broth, plenty of clams, potatoes, and not much else). 

This is the kind of place we love to discover - all they had on the table for condiments was Texas Pete Pepper Sauce, Texas Pete Hot Sauce, and Malt Vinegar.  I had the crab cake sandwich as well, made in-house and falling-apart delicious!

We spotted this egret in the reeds just before we crossed the bridge to the island - it had flown in spectacularly but we did not get the camera out in time to catch it mid-flight.

At the Ferry at the eastern end of the island, the wind was glowing straight in off the Sound and gulls were just hanging in the air, as if tethered by kite-strings, gazing out over the water toward Cape Lookout Lighthouse faintly seen on the horizon.

Then we spent some time wandering through the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center, which was celebrating its 25th year and which we had toured last year as well.

It's one of the best small museums in the area, filled with fascinating exhibits as diverse as two splendid Community Quilts (and the local quilters were working today in the special-events room), looping videos about fishing and the Down East Brogue, and a continuously-playing recording of the Menhaden Chanteymen singing acapela work songs going back to slavery days.  As we climbed up to the second floor, and the third, and on up to the tower with a view of Cape Lookout lighthouse on one side and Willow Pond on the other, we could hear their soft voices harmonizing down below us, and picture their grandfathers doing hot field work or hauling in nets heavy with menhaden.

This old photo of a"Dry Boatman," whose job it was to spot the big schools of menhaden and lead the big fishing boats out to them, was especially fascinating to me.  I would have loved to have spoken to him, although he looked like the sort of man who would not waste much time on foolish talk.

I remember this quote from Wallace Stegner from last year, and it was a fitting one for this place devoted to explaining exactly who these people were who lived here over the years, with their Downeast brogue and their hard lives out on the sea.  People who hailed from any other place (like us) were called "Off."

The museum houses one of the most comfortable-looking libraries I have ever seen; I could have spent the rest of the day in that leather chair, reading through local-history books.

We rambled back past shrimp boats berthed safely in a little marina on this extremely rough day, white-caps charging in on the Sound, blowing back everything in sight in a furious gale (although temperatures were surprisingly mild).

An interesting little thrift store beckoned on the road back to Beaufort, complete with enigmatic bible verse that I had to look up.
 

"Call to me and I will answer you 

and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

And so we found ourselves back in Beaufort at the end of the day, and then Morehead City again, and across the bridge to Atlantic Beach.  Where were we from, after all?  Do we know who we are?  We spent the day driving through cold salt flats and past little houses nestled under live oak trees and backing up on the choppy sound, gleaming brightly behind them, looking for all the unsearchable things still to be discovered.