Injured at 69

It is always with great reluctance that a runner, especially this stubborn one, must admit that he is injured.  But alas, an old injury I have had before has cropped up again, perhaps because of our relatively steep training program, perhaps because of running too fast on that new pair of shoes I began wearing Thursday.  (It does pay, I have found, to review your running log and try to identify what has caused a problem so as to avoid it again.)  I remember feeling some discomfort when I completed a short-three mile run on those shoes.  (See post of February 23:  "I also noticed a lot of stiffness in my right leg, involving the IT band and the knee - the new shoes, perhaps? - which, however, seems to improve the more I run.")

Saturday's five mile run left no doubt that there was a problem.  I limped my way halfway across the parking lot, and although once again the pain disappeared the more I ran (five miles at an average of 10:47), I found myself nearly hobbling the rest of the day.  Monday morning I tried run/walking in my old shoes - the ones I had been wearing while awaiting the arrival of the new ones - but without success.  So  I returned and tried the new ones again, only to find that the improvement was slight.  I ended up going out on the beach at the Picnic Area and realized I had misjudged the tide, which was nearly high, forcing me to keep stopping and walking in the soft sand on the upper part of the beach.  And then it began to rain.

Oh well.  So it goes.  As Hamlet bemoaned, "How all occasions do inform against me!"

Yesterday I bought a knee brace at Walgreens, similar to one I have at home that seemed to help in the past, and I spent the evening resting, putting my feet up to finish "Death Comes to Pemberley."  The test came this morning when, brace on knee and possessed with a determination only to listen closely to my body, I ran three miles, gingerly at first, but more and more confidently when I got to Fort Macon Road.  I had to stop and adjust the brace twice, but it went relatively well - an average of 12-minute miles, and not too much pain.  I know that I can run a 5-K; I am pretty sure that I can run a 10-K; but I realize it would be foolish to attempt the half marathon.  So I will be conservative on Saturday, schedule a visit to "Dr. Sue" when we return to Highlands, and set my sights on another race, perhaps the Flying Pirate Half Marathon in April.

Meanwhile, Martha is carrying out the final week of her training plan perfectly, running five miles on Monday and three miles this morning.  I believe that she will have the best race she has had in a long time, and her first half marathon in three years.  For my part, I have become aware that I am a disappointed runner who has been feeling a little too sorry for himself; Martha has been indulgent about my low spirits and I appreciate it.  As a runner I know that injury is all but inevitable.  I have recovered in the past and will do so again.

So I walked out on the beach this afternoon at low tide, enjoying the overcast sky, the calm conditions and the glassy ocean.  Yesterday Martha spotted two dolphins in the surf, close to shore, but I saw nothing today.  Only those dark clouds that seemed to be clearing a little, and this odd little piece of broken shell, or rock, pitted with tiny holes, which I have placed reverently in the offering plate on the table.

Mardis Gras

When I walked down to do my Tai Chi on the deck this morning, I was stopped in my tracks by an astonishing sight:  there was a light mist of rain just barely apparent in the air, and the golden light of a sunrise peeking under clouds to the east, and to the west a huge rainbow, spread out in a tall arc in the sky, disappearing behind the houses west of the condo.  I hurried back inside, grabbed my phone, but by the time I had returned this magical but evanescent rainbow has completely disappeared.  It had instead begun to rain harder, so I was content to go through the familiar forms under the protection of the building.

We are exactly one week away from the half marathon now, so the plan today was to run five or six miles at an easy pace.  Martha ran six miles, finishing up on the beach at low tide.  I decided to do a traditional workout I like to do one week before a distance race, five miles at projected race pace.  The stiffness I had felt on Thursday was still there in my right leg, but with each mile it faded more and more (I had decided to stop and walk if it did not diminish) and I ended with an average of 10:47, which was just perfect, good enough for a 2:21:00 marathon.  But of course I realize I cannot sustain such a pace these days and would be happy at this point merely to finish.

After lunch in the condo, we drove to Beaufort.  I know that Mardi Gras was on February 13, almost two weeks ago, but Beaufort celebrates Fat Tuesday on the last Saturday in February with "Mardis Gras on Middle Lane."  We sampled some local jambalaya and gumbo and enjoyed listening to the mellow sounds of Blue Moon Jazz.

The parade down Middle Lane began at 3:00 p.m. and incorporated all of those New Orleans features but with a Pirate twist.  The trumpet player from Blue Moon Jazz had left the stage and was marching in the parade playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."  And this Blackbeard led the way, cracking a frightening bull whip loudly as he walked along. 

Then came the scary, painted faces of the "dead," handing out beads and wearing outrageous flowered hats.

And the towering giants, head and shoulders above the onlookers, high-fiving children along the way, turning this way and that.

And we remembered this motorized little guy from last year, scooting along with a natty hat upon his skull.

The parade ended, and a new band began setting up on the stage, The Wicked Mojos, whom we also remembered from last year.  The lead singer could really belt out those Delta blues, and the lead guitarist with his scorching hot licks could match Stevie Ray any day.  He used three guitars, each of them set up differently (one for a pick, one for a slide, and one for a unique fingering style without any pick).  We stayed until nearly 6:00 p.m. watching children and adults alike dancing and celebrating.

So this was the first day of the rest of my 69th year.  And 40 days of Lent.

69th Birthday

Yesterday, we ran some easy miles; the half marathon is less than ten days away, and now is the time when any niggling pain or stiffness would be likely to rear its head.  I had ordered a new pair of shoes and they arrived yesterday, so that is what I wore today.  I decided to run the second mile "comfortably fast" and was surprised that, on these new shoes, I was about a minute faster than my expected pace.  But I also noticed a lot of stiffness in my right leg, involving the IT band and the knee - the new shoes, perhaps? - which, however, seems to improve the more I run.  The rest of the day was spend soaking up the brilliant sunshine (well protected with sunblock) down on the beach in deck chairs.

We had planned to spend today, this rest day, my 69th birthday, taking a ferry from Beaufort to Bird Shoals, and a pristine beach.  It reminded me of one of my favorite Laurie Anderson songs:

"I've been getting lots of sun. And lots of rest. It's really hot.
Days, I dive by the wreck. Nights, I swim in the blue lagoon
Always used to wonder who I'd bring to a desert island."

(Of course, there is no doubt who I would bring!)  But the thick morning fog that has been quickly dissipating the past two mornings did not move; it stayed around until early afternoon.  We even wondered if, having been dropped off, the ferryman would be able to find us again when it was time to return to Beaufort.  So we decided to take a short hike on a new trail we had read about, the Hoop Pole Creek trail; the trail head was just opposite Bojangles and the parking lot of Food Lion, right in the heart of Atlantic Beach.

The walkway began right off the parking lot but quickly left the dubious fast food and grocery-store civilization behind, and in no time we were lost in a beautiful maritime forest.  It passed by live oak trees with outspread limbs, and ended up on the salt marsh.  What a surprise to find this quiet walk in the unlikeliest of places.

After lunch at the condo, we decided to go back out to Fort Macon for a hike on the Elliott Coues Natural Trail (see post of February 11).  The sun had broken through by then, and we began by taking Yarrow's Loop, where we had gone bird watching last week.  As we turned the corner, we saw an amazing sight:  the trees out in the lake, where last week we had sighted two or three birds, was filled with dozens of roosting white ibises:

We have never seen these birds except standing out in the salt marsh, usually solitary; never in a group like this.  Martha said with a smile that she counted and there were 69 of them.  We lingered to take photographs, but few of them captured the astonishing sight.

We circled the pond and began the hike toward the Bath House, then back on the dune side; it was a lovely day.  When we returned, we visited the pond again, and on our approach we saw a dozen or so ibises on the wing, heading back toward the pond; perhaps they had been spooked and been forced to disband, and now they were returning to their late-afternoon and early-evening roosting place.

We came closer and closer to one solitary little fellow who was standing in shallow water, fishing; or perhaps he was the lookout who had given the alarm earlier.

He spread his wings wide as he stood there, displaying the tell-tale black wing tips; a beautiful sight.

So it turned out to be a good day, despite the change of plans, to celebrate 69 years of life, of being out of doors in places like this, with my loving wife at my side sharing the glory of this beautiful world where at any moment the attentive man or woman might see winged creatures soaring heavenward, or coming down to rest for the night.

The plan for the evening was to have tapas, or "small plates," at the same place we had discovered last year, Circa 81 in Morehead City, where, I must confess, I did not eat food particularly conducive to tomorrow morning's run - think Medjool dates wrapped in bacon with a sunchoke sauce, and seared sesame tuna with wasabi and soy ginger dipping sauce, not pasta and marinara.  But a man only passes the 69 year mile marker once in a lifetime after all.

Oriental

Inspired by our World Food Tour Chinese dinner, we decided it would be a good day to take a trip to the Orient - Oriental, North Carolina, that is.  We had been told about Oriental by a couple staying in one of these condos last year but never had the chance to go.  This was a rest day, warm and sunny:  propitious conditions for an Oriental trip.

A visitor can reach Oriental by driving north to New Bern, then east; or by taking the Minnesott Beach-Cherry Branch ferry across the Neuse River.  This is flat agriculture country very reminiscent of that area of the Outer banks west of Kitty Hawk.  We stopped for lunch in The Silos, a little restaurant we had read about on Tripadvisor, constructed within two silos.

The proprietor was young and knowledgeable, and the place was decorated with records on the walls and ceilings.  A live band plays Wednesday nights, and there is an outdoor stage, too; this looks like the place to listen to live music during the summer.

There wasn't much to see in Oriental, in all honesty - we stopped at Lou Mac Park on the banks of the Neuse river, and then drove down to the harbor, as picturesque as we expected.

It is a friendly enough place, though, and we had the feeling that everybody knew each other on a first-name basis.  We stopped in a little store that had everything from nautical gear to knick-knacks.  "Are you boating?" the owner asked.  "No, we just drove over to visit; we've never been here before."  He said we were welcome to use his bicycles (parked around the side of the building) to pedal around and look at some of the nicely-restored historic homes, which was nice of him; I had the feeling that if we had chatted much longer, or taken up his offer, we, too, would have been on a first-name basis.

There were some great photographs to take on the way back to the Minnesott Beach ferry; this little fishing shack was slowly falling into the creek.

We enjoyed the ferry ride aboard the Thomas A Baum as people do who hardly ever ride a ferry.  The free ferry system in North Carolina is one of the unsung wonders of our State.  We started up the stairs to the top deck, and one of the officials stopped us with a smile.  "Sorry," he said.  "Since 9/11, nobody is allowed in the upper cabin."  What a dangerous world we live in, even here on this innocuous ferryboat.

While one of the other passengers was sitting impatiently in his car, engine running, waiting for the trip to be over, we walked around deck, dropped a quarter in the big binoculars to examine the houses lining the river, and watched the sea gulls following us closely.

There is something magical about a ferry:  that we can board a simple boat and avoid miles and miles of roads, simply going from one bank to another as people have done for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.  What an honorable vocation it is to be a ferryman!

"By this river I want to stay, thought Siddhartha, 
it is the same which I have crossed a long time ago 
on my way to the childlike people, 
a friendly ferryman had guided me then,
he is the one I want to go to."

 - Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse 

Bark Less, Wag More

This morning the fog was so thick when I went out to the dune top deck that I could not see the ocean - morning light was breaking up the clouds overhead, and temperatures were in the upper 60s; a morning dove was cooing gently.

The training schedule called for a tempo run this morning, the last "fast" miles we will run until the half marathon in eleven days.  I was trying to hit my goal pace, somewhere between 10:20 and 10:40 per mile, and so I was happy to run four miles at an average of 10:38; Martha also felt that she had run close to her goal pace.  But it was very warm and we have not acclimated ourselves to these temperatures.  Still, it was a confidence-builder to be able to hold a steady pace, without split marks and in warmer temperatures, on such a warm morning.

This afternoon we drove over to Beaufort and spent the afternoon tasting olive oil at the Beaufort Olive Oil Company and walking up and down Front Street.  I spent some time in the Maritime Museum, where there were new exhibits about Blackbeard, and I watched an interesting DVD on the excavation of a shipwreck local experts believe is his ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge.  I especially loved the quote by John Masefield above the door:

"All I ask is a tall ship,

and a star to steer her by."

It was warm and sunny and the narcissus were blooming on Front Street as I walked down to the harbor and then back again.

Then we returned to Morehead City and the Friendly Market for another stop on our World Food Tour, China.  The menu consisted of Taiwanese pork belly buns, egg roll bowl, baked sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, and Chinese egg tarts, most of which were new to us.  Their post on Facebook had said, "To help celebrate 'The Year of the Dog, @sally_no_fm will be slipping a special fortune cookie into one randomly chosen customer's bag for this week's World Food Tour to China dinner! One 'lucky dog' will WIN the next stop to Argentina on us!"  (Argentina is the next stop in the World Food Tour).  Sally, by the way, is a beautiful, gentle dog who can usually be found lying on the floor in the Market, sometimes her nose just at the very edge of the swinging-doors to the kitchen beyond which she is forbidden to go (thus "Sally No").

 
When we returned home, we warmed up the Chinese dishes and then broke open our fortune cookie and found this inside:

 

So WE are the winners!  We are looking forward to Argentina, and we are enjoying the feeling of having won some small bit of fortune.

Pride and Prejudice

I think I may have mentioned several days ago in this blog that, almost on a whim, I picked up a copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which I completed this evening.  I don't know why this book, which The New Yorker called "the most beloved novel in the language," somehow escaped my notice all these years.  I read Emma; I think I read some of her other works; but alas I never read Pride and Prejudice.  Now happily this fault in my education has been corrected, and I share the opinion of many Austen fans that Elizabeth Bennet is one of the finest characters ever created.

Now that I have read Price and Prejudice, I can complete my reading of every single word that the British mystery writer P. D. James has written, with her 2011 book, Death Comes to Pemberley, which proposes a murder following the events in Austen's book.  I never read it because I never read Pride and Prejudice.  Now I can!  I know I am behind the times a bit; I think Masterpiece Theater serialized the book a few years ago.

Here on Sabbatical, so far from home, we feel that we have time to do nothing more some evenings than curl up with a good book, the sound  of the ocean in the background, wave after wave coming in unhurriedly, page after page being turned.  Reading and The Beach go hand in hand - like Elizabeth and Darcy, strolling through the grounds of Pemberley.

St. Francis By The Sea

A beautiful morning over the ocean:  a narrow band of violet spread all along the horizon, while the sun struggled to tear through the shroud of clouds above.  The deck was alive with the sound of birds all around, enjoying the diminished wind and the warmer temperatures.

After church at First Methodist again, where we heard a wonderful sermon for the first Sunday in Lent from Pastor Powell, we stopped at the Ruddy Duck for a simple bowl of that clear Hatteras Clam chowder that we have come to appreciate.

Then, still a little hungry, we drove down the coast to Pine Knoll Shores and the beautiful St. Francis By the Sea Episcopal Church, where Martha had found another interesting event for us to enjoy.  Called "Openings:  Artistry in Small Bites," it was a tasting of 50 appetizers, which were featured in an upcoming cookbook to be published by the ladies of the church.  So we grazed on pickled shrimp, as many different kinds of dips as I have seen in a long time, bacon-wrapped dates, and other delicacies.  The room slowly filled up as the tasting began and I breathed a sigh of relief when the only other man arrived in a room of 30 women, then one or two more.  I had felt like a fish out of water.

You don't expect to see familiar faces when you are 500 miles from home, so we were surprised when a woman stopped in front of us and said, "I have been trying to remember you!  You're the ones who liked the brown rice salad with kiwi fruit!"  She was Pam, from Friendly Market.  She was a member of the St. Francis parish and had made some collard green dip for this event.  Then Martha recognized a woman over by the pickled shrimp.  I went up to her and said, "I believe you sat in front of us in church this morning."  It turned out she was also a member; she admitted that she had deserted to the Methodist church because it was Youth Sunday here, which she did not enjoy.  "And I love to hear Powell," she said.  And we also met Barbara, who was staying just down the road in "A Place by the Sea."  Barbara walks six or seven miles a day, and we began talking about running; we may have encouraged her to run her first 5-K on March 3! 

It is a beautiful building, a sanctuary upstairs in the round which reminded us of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville.  In the ground, a brick-paved pathway passed under this arch, its columns encrusted with oyster shells, to a labyrinth.

Round and round I walked in this labyrinth, as many worshipers before me had walked, I imagined, lost in reflection and prayer.  It was an interesting kind of journey; at times the traveler feels as if he is approaching the center, but then he turns and is farther away than ever.  But gradually the center appears.

And I found myself finally in the very center, gazing down on a small arrangement of rocks and whelk-shells, and a little fish, reminding us of this Lenten season.

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” - T. S. Eliot

Saturday

This was a big day for Martha.  In her relatively short lead-up to the half marathon in two weeks, she has increased the distance of her long run from six miles to eight miles to, today, ten miles.  I have to admit that I had some reservations back in January about her ability to ramp up her mileage so quickly; I had reminded her that she could always run the 10-K instead.  But her running has gone well, she is light and strong, and today she had no problem with the distance.  I met her on Fort Macon Road on this cloudy, windy morning  somewhere near mile eight and she said, "I feel great!" as she passed by in perfect form.  I have no doubt now that she will be able to complete 13.1 miles, and will likely have a faster time than I will.

We had a quick lunch here in the condo and then drove down to Atlantic Beach Station to watch a matinee of the Clint Eastwood-directed movie The 15:17 to Paris, about three American men who became heroes during a high-speed railway ride in 2015 when they thwarted a terrorist attack.  It was a very moving story, made more realistic because the three young men played themselves in the movie; some reviewers had not liked this, but The New Yorker's reliable Richard Brody had given it high praise and we agree.

How to celebrate after Martha's ten-mile run and my nine-mile run was not difficult to decide  The Friendly Market, which I have written about in this blog from time to time, remains a source for tried and true recipes, but is also interested in expanding its horizons.  This year they started something called the World Food Tour 2018.

Beginning in mid-January they have featured complete dinners, at a very reasonable price and more than enough for us to enjoy for two nights, from countries around the world; thus far we have sampled dishes from Thailand, Mexico, "Down Under" (Australia and New Zealand), Italy, Germany (which we missed), Italy, and France.  Travelers through these countries have their "passport" stamped each week.  (We liked the brown rice salad with kiwi fruit that came with the Down Under dinner so much, and told them so, that they made some extra to sell separately from the dinners.)  So we have been dining frugally but sumptuously here in Atlantic Beach!

For our celebratory dinner we dined on coq au vin with a creme fraiche appetizer, sides of rice and a provencal vegetable casserole, and crepes suzette for dessert.  After dinner, and just before we were ready to go to bed (I have nearly finished with great delight Pride and Prejudice, and Martha is reading The Blue Zones), I stepped outside and the wind, which had kept up all day, had miraculously stopped completely, a rare occasion here alongside the Atlantic Ocean.  So we walked out on the dune-top deck and sat and looked at one or two stars overhead, listening to the gentle crash of surf in the darkness, and the breathless night all around us.

Harker's Island

Tomorrow will be our long run for the week; Martha hopes to complete ten miles, the longest she has run in a long time, and I plan to run nine miles.  So today was a rest day, with sunny skies but a strong wind straight off the ocean.  We decided to drive down to Harkers Island for a picnic, including a visit to the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center, set back under live oak trees next to the Visitor's Center.  Martha's aunt Lizette first told us about Harkers Island; she and her husband Leon would drive out here whenever they came to Atlantic Beach.

The parking lot at the Visitor's Center, where we had picnicked last year, was occupied by a large, aggresive group of hungry sea gulls; they swarmed overhead, probably in anticipation of the junk food that is even more harmful to them than to humans.

The wind was still pretty brisk, too, so we drove back under the trees to the Museum and found some quiet, secluded picnic tables undiscovered by the sea gulls and sheltered from the wind.  What a treat it was to sit under the trees and eat a simple lunch of smoked salmon, kale salad, and a baguette of French bread.  It made us feel European in some way.

The Museum is a treasure, its first floor devoted mostly to interesting exhibits about life in "Downeast," which this part of North Carolina is called, including hundreds of historic decoys.

In the rear, the beautiful book-lined Robert Turnage Monk Library invites a visitor to pull a book on birds or nautical lore from the shelves and read all afternoon.

My favorite exhibit downstairs is a DVD continually playing of the Menhaden Chanteymen, who still perform today - they won the N.C. Heritage Award in 1991 - recreating the working songs of the predominately black shipboard crews employed by the fisheries.  Menhaden fishing was big in these parts a long time ago, and the Maritime Museum in Beaufort has a similar exhibit.  But this one focuses on the "chanteys" or work songs, with its beautiful rhythms and call-and-responses form.  A leader sings out the first line of the song and the rest of the crew follows in harmony.  Like the work songs of the Delta, this music is the basis of gospel songs and blues.

A visitor can hear the beautiful, haunting harmonies as he climbs to the second floor - the Heritage Center - which contains exhibits from all of the Downeast towns (Salter Path, Otway, etc.), prepared by local historical groups in those communities.  Another DVD continually plays focusing on the unique Downeast brogue and its peculiar words, which to my mind sounded like a British Cockney accent.  These people lived in relative isolation until recently, especially in the more remote communities and on fishing boats, and it is fascinating that they retained the accent of their immigrant forebears.

Finally, the enthusiastic visitor, heedless of tomorrow's long run, might climb up higher and higher on steep wooden steps, to the tower at the very top and its long-range views of the Willow Pond on one side and Cape Lookout Lighthouse on the other.

In preparation for the long run tomorrow, we ate simple pasta and marinara sauce.  But Wednesday night - Valentine's Day - we splurged a little and had delicious crab cakes (Martha) and yellowfin tuna (Richard) at Amos Mosquitos.  The highlight of the evening was dessert:  "S'mores," which we prepared at our table over a little sterno burner, with little sticks for roasting the marshmallows, and Hershey Chocolate and Graham Crackers.  We compared notes and realized it had been 40 or 50 years since we have enjoyed these decadent treats!  "Adult supervision required," the dessert menu read.  But our waiter told us that it had been the adults over the years who had required the most supervision.

But none of that tonight!  Tonight it is only pasta and bread and a good night's sleep. 

Muskets and Valentines

Yesterday morning it was nearly 50 degrees, but cloudy and very windy - 20 mph winds, straight out of the northeast - and the training schedule called for a five-mile tempo run for each of us; we do not want to miss any more workouts, so we headed out early.  It was one of those "character-building" runs (see previous post), the kind of run that you are glad to have put behind you, glad to have crossed off the schedule.

This morning we drove back up to Fort Macon - we are becoming regulars there! - and watched one of the younger rangers demonstrate the firing of a Civil War-era musket.  (That does not sound very romantic for Valentine's Day, but we remembered that last year we went to see a performance of Macbeth in New Bern, one of Shakespeare's bloodiest plays, which concludes with the beheading of the main character.)  So a small group of us watched Ben, the youngest Park Ranger, explain to us in fascinating details the nine-step process of loading and firing an 1864 Springfield musket.

He said that soldiers in this era were required to have at least three teeth, on opposing jaws, because the first step in firing the musket was ripping open with their teeth the little package containing powder and bullet.  The powder was poured in, then the ramrod removed from under the barrel to tamp it down, then the bullet.  Only two fingers were used because sometimes a barrel too hot from firing would blow the bullet out on its own; thus, the unlucky soldier would have a thumb and two more fingers to continue loading and firing.

Because the huge 58-caliber bullets (which succeeded the "minie" balls) could ricochet around brick walls, Ben used a tightly rolled-up wad of Charmin's toilet paper.  The explosion was deafening and was accompanied by a cloud of smoke caused by the poor-quality gunpowder used; during battle, these clouds could create terrible visibility on the battlefield, intensifying the horror of up-close, bloody battle with bone-shattering bullets and bayonets.  What a horrible thing warfare is!  And how good we have gotten at improving weapons of war over the years.

After the musket demonstration concluded, we joined Ben on a tour of the Fort.  Although we had been on self-guided tours through the restored barracks, gunpowder room, and officers quarters in past years, this tour was one of the best we have attended.

These mortars were brought into the fort after the climactic battle of 1862 in which General Burnside shelled the fort and ultimately caused the confederate soldiers inside to surrender.  He showed us the huge crack in the ceiling, running through several rooms, which was the deciding factor for the confederates; it was enough to convince Colonel Moses White, commanding the Confederate garrison, that "further resistance was folly."  The main reason for this was fear that the nearby gunpowder room would explode, which would make the other two explode as well, which would in Ben's words have created a mushroom cloud and a very large hole in the ground.  The mortars, had they been in place in 1862, could have been used against the Union artillery set up in the dunes (past which we often run) because they are accurate over shorter distances.  But all they had were these 32-pound cannons, which were accurate against ships coming into the Beaufort harbor for up to three miles, but would slam harmlessly into the sand dunes behind which the Union forces were shielded.

Although much of the fort was re-constructed during the Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps, signs still remain of the many cannonballs that fell within the fort.  This is a huge depression left in the solid Connecticut granite stone topping the brick walls along the interior parade ground of the five-sided fort. 

I had also never known that the parade ground and  citadel in the interior, surrounded currently by a wide perimeter of green grass, was originally a moat filled with water from gates that could be opened and closed; a complex drainage system keeps it dry now.

What an interesting place to learn about in more depth!  It is sobering to remember the warfare that took place here over 150 years ago and the men who lost their lives.  It was a different era then, though.  Before battle commenced, General Burnside personally approached the fort, knocked on the doors, and asked it to surrender.  And he did this two more times before shelling began.  When the battle was over, he had lost a single man and the garrison inside seven men.  All of the garrison were taken prisoners, but then released after they had signed a paper saying they would return to their farms and places of business and not fight anymore.  "Of course," Ben said, "They quickly left, picked up a musket, and continued fighting until the war was over."

Now, when we run past the fort on our way to the Visitor Center, we will look at those cannons and that flag and remember what took place here in our not-too-distant past.

But Valentines Day is not over, and we are looking forward to eating dinner tonight - out first dinner out since we have arrived - at Amos Mosquito's, just down the road from the condo, and a bit more romantic than a Civil War musket demonstration.

Birdwatching at Fort Macon

This morning we returned to Fort Macon State Park for an activity new to our experience:  Birdwatching.  Martha had read about the program in the local newspaper, so we ignored the forecast for rain, dressed in gore tex jackets, and brought our pair of Bushnell binoculars with us to the Fort where Park Ranger Randy, binoculars around his neck and bird guide in his pocket, was ready to go.  We were joined by Dan and Linda, who both had considerable experience; Dan had led birding expeditions, and Linda had 81 thus far on her 2018 Watch List.
 
"Virtually everybody watches birds at times," a website on ornithology informed me, "but not everybody is a birdwatcher."  Birdwatchers are more interested in identifying birds, so I suppose that puts me in that category.  "Birders," however, are an entirely different species, "more intense, more dedicated, more serious about the hobby and . . . sometimes offended by being called a birdwatcher."  We realized immediately that we were in the midst of this more passionate category as we began our walk, past the bird feeders and into the swampy area behind the Fort.

"There's a red-winged blackbird," Randy suddenly said, and immediately lifted his binoculars to his eyes.  He had a real talent for this, as did the others, whereas I was shifting mine back and forth, in and out of focus, thinking, "Where? Where?"  The same area we had hiked in yesterday suddenly came alive as we stood silently, watching all kinds of previously nondescript birds being identified!  There were swallows and mockingbirds and catbirds, to be sure, but also yellow rumped warblers (Yes, they do have little yellow rumps!) and grackles, and one huge black crowned night heron that arose out of a thicket and soared away over the Coast Guard Station.

Randy was good at "calling" them, two - I think he had as large a vocabulary as a mockingbird, as he made little twittering and tweaking sounds, patiently waiting to see what might fly up out of the bushes.  And he knew their personalities well, too.  "Plovers don't want to be seen at all," he said.  "But mockingbirds like to show off."

Linda, less experienced than Dan and Randy, had already learned to disparage the "common" birds like robins and the pine warblers that I had been admiring all week.  "I have a things with pine warblers," she said.  "They get in the way and scare off some of the other birds."  Even the beautiful red cardinals she referred to as ordinary.  Meanwhile, I found myself watching some of the ordinary sparrows and mockingbirds with fascination as they perched and then disappeared and then re-appeared on another limb.

Randy was good at pulling his bird guide out in seconds and immediately flipping open the right page.  How did he do it?  Martha noticed it, too.  But he was a likeable enough expert, not at all arrogant, merely rattling off one interesting bit of knowledge after another.  We crossed over to the ocean side and started seeing brown pelicans and loons, and one very impressive great cormorant winging his way over the channel.  I pointed to what I thought was a sandpiper playing in the surf.  "Most people make that same mistake," he said, "But those are actually sanderlings, and the larger ones are willets."  Dan got excited about a Bonaparte's gull; he had not seen one this year.

What simple joy this small group took in merely looking at these birds, spotting them and learning their names and their habits, watching a loon dive underwater and swim for a long time up the channel, bob his head up, and then turn around.  "Realized there weren't any fish up the channel," Randy explained, "So he's heading back."  These birders were true naturalists, not limiting themselves merely to birds but aware of the environment around them in an intense and knowledgeable way that I admired.  I felt that I had been speed-reading nature; these people were savoring every word.  I would have used the word "worship," perhaps.

The fog cleared a little and then fine rain began falling as we neared the Fort.  "One more trip to the bird feeders and that will make a good day," Randy said.  Suddenly a beautiful little bright green bird appeared.  "There!  There!"  Randy said, pointing to the center feeder.  Linda spotted it eventually, and so did the rest of us, and she let out a whoop of joy - a painted bunting, which she had never seen before.  For her list.

"Look at the birds of the air, 

for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; 

yet your heavenly Father feeds them. 

Are you not of more value than they?"