Reading and Writing

We have insisted on calling this time at Atlantic Beach a Sabbatical - see post of January 3, the day we left Highlands.  It is not a vacation, nor an escape.  It is a time for renewal and rejuvenation, for a break from the ordinary, and so we often find ourselves in the realm of the extraordinary - touching the heart of a whale, finding a royal sea star, listening to the story of a ghost ship.  We spend our evenings reading, mostly, comfortably ensconced with book or magazine.  The hours somehow seem longer here - like the vastness of the ocean stretching to the horizon, the immensity of the sky, the glory of the sun rising and setting - and so it seems easy and natural to fill this time with books.

I have also found time to write here, not just this blog, but the poetry that has been my passion most of my life, even when there was little time amidst the demands of family, career, and church.  Some of my recent poems have had their inception here, although sometimes I flesh them out later in Highlands.  I have had many of my poems published in the North Carolina Literary Review in recent years, and last week I received a Facebook notification that my latest poem has just been published in the NCLR on-line edition.

Martha urged me to share this announcement, and after some hesitancy, I agreed.  I was surprised and heartened by the "likes" and comments of encouragement I have received, many of them from friends who know me as that Town Administrator, or the runner they see all over Highlands, but might not have known that I also write obscure little poems.

So that is another joy of being here.  The history of this part of the world - its beauty every day, and the endless interest of the living beach, the every-changing clouds, the ocean always in a different mood every day - can be very inspiring!

Ghost Ship

It was chilly and windy when I went out onto the walkway for my morning Tai Chi, the sky still streaked with the remains of the sunrise.  This big freighter was coming into the Morehead City Channel.

 
Yesterday, I tackled a repair I had been meaning to make since we have been here in the condo.  It was a patch of broken popcorn ceiling in the corner of the master bedroom.

The local Ace hardware store is a good one, and I had researched several products for making the repair, finally settling on the most expensive one, a can of spray repair material that (according to the instructions in both English and Spanish) appeared to be foolproof to use.  After carefully taping newspaper around the area and on the floor, screwing on the applicator tip, and pulling the double "trigger" on the can, it immediately exploded into a spray of popcorn-ceiling material that spattered more on my head than on the ceiling.  I rushed to wash my clothes, hair, and face, so fortunately Martha did not have time to take a photo of me in my popcorn-festooned state.  So much for "foolproof!"  But that's how it goes with repair work.

I returned to the hardware store and next purchased the least expensive material, which came in a tube the size of toothpaste, and (I should have known) it worked perfectly.  An application of paint completed the project.

This afternoon, we returned to Beaufort for an interesting bag lunch program at the N. C. Maritime Museum.  This is a great little museum which we have supported through their clam chowder cook-offs for the past two years, and we are now members as well.

While we ate home-made tuna sandwiches, we listened with 20 other visitors to a presentation on "The Vanishing Crew of the Carroll A. Deering."  This so-called "ghost ship" was a five-master schooner that washed up on the Diamond Shoals off the coast of Cape Hatteras in 1920 on a return trip from South America to Norfolk, VA.  The ship was completely deserted - no crew, no lifeboats, no ships logs - and there has been much speculation about what happened to it.  Many ships have gone missing in these treacherous waters, but few crews have gone missing leaving the ship behind.

One of the best displays at the Maritime Museum is the skeleton of a sperm whale, affectionately named "Echo," which is impressively suspended from the ceiling.  The whale was a 33.5-foot-long adolescent male sperm whale that stranded and died at Cape Lookout in January 2004; its skeleton was meticulously preserved and re-assembled.

Also on display is the whale's heart, which was sent to the University of Tennessee for plastination.  A helpful volunteer showed us the heart, about the size of a large duffel bag and displayed in a glass case.  "Would you like to touch it?" she asked.  We did, and she carefully lifted one side of the case.  "Most people say it feels like rubber bands," she said, and indeed it did.

"The heart of a blue whale," she confided in us, "Is the size of a Volkswagen beetle."  Very impressive.  And the first whale heart I have ever touched.
 
There is always something new to learn about this area, and we have enjoyed visiting the museum in Beaufort just as much as Fort Macon and learning about the rich local history in this area of the Outer Banks.

Beaufort is a pretty little Town, and after the presentation we enjoyed poking around in its antique shops before returning.  Crossing the bridge back to Morehead City we saw a huge bright-orange freighter in the channel, the same one I had seen on the horizon first thing this morning, I think, and not a ghost ship at all, but a very real one, unloading its cargo here 100 years after the Carroll A. Deering had arrived nearby with no hands on deck.

Gratitude

We are grateful for being able to stay here in Atlantic Beach during the coldest part of the winter, and it is entirely because of the generosity of Martha's aunt Lizette.  Were it not for her making this condo available to us, we would be in much the same situation as our friend Vicki, who e-mailed me today on conditions in Highlands  She said, in part:  "We had maybe an inch of snow here but all clear now, 26 outside and getting much colder.  Yuck. . . Been really hard to get much running in - either fog/rain or windy & cold.  At least January will be over soon."

The stark contrast between Highlands and Atlantic Beach was brought home this morning by her message, and also the text message on my phone from Macon County Emergency Management, a winter weather advisory for Sassafras Gap Road.  I checked the Highlands webcam and it showed rain mixed with snow on main street and a temperature of 31 degrees.

 I looked out the window here and the sun was shining, the temperature in the upper forties, approaching 50.  What a difference!

We both ran the five miles to Fort Macon and back in perfect weather conditions - no wind, sunshine peeking out from behind clouds from time to time.  It occurred to me while I was running on the bike lane along Fort Macon Road that it was the exact same width as a lane on a track.  Perfect.

We come out here to be able to run during January and February, to not lose ground.  But this year, it seems as if we are actually gaining ground, getting faster and stronger, looking ahead to the races to come.  So we are grateful for being able to keep moving forward, giving thanks every day for the sunshine and the fresh ocean air and our own good health.

Butterflies and Sea Stars

This morning we both continued our training plan of long weekend runs of gradually increasing distance.  Martha's goal was seven miles, mine was eight, and we both accomplished what we set out to do, which is most of what running is about after all.

It was a cold 32 degrees, and the walkway was so frosty that I did not venture out on it until later in the day.  But the wind had died down and it turned out to be a perfect day for a long run.  I enjoy these easy-paced runs; the only objective is distance, so the pace was comfortable and there was plenty of time to look around.  Fort Macon was not very busy, except for a busload of young people from the Calvary Baptist Church in New Bern who arrived in the parking lot at the same time as I did.   They flew across the parking lot when they were released from the bus, as if they were race horses or greyhounds at the starting gate, and I could hear them squealing as they ran down the Elliot Coues Nature Trail on the sound side, delighted to simply be out of doors on this sparkling morning.

When I turned into the Bath House parking lot for a final loop on my return, something bright and orange flew right in front of me:  a butterfly.  And probably, as I learned later, a Gulf fritillary:

What an unexpected and beautiful sight to see, here in January, just a month and a day after Christmas; our first buterflies do not appear in Highlands until April or May.

While I was running on the road to Fort Macon, Martha (who had started a little later than I did) decided to return on the beach.  We never saw each other - I was probably in one of the parking lots - but she said it had been an absolutely beautiful run on the beach.  And she found something even rarer than my little fritillary - this Royal Sea Star, which had just washed up in the gently-breaking surf just a half-mile from the condo.

I did find a starfish (actually, a sea star, but of another species) in Duck several years ago, but nothing like this - the deep purple body, the delicate legs.

So:  "flutter-bys" and fallen sea stars, in here in broad daylight.  The treasures we find when we run along the roadways or on the beach out here in this beautiful place.

Winterfeast

This was the third year that we have been able to attend Winterfeast, the annual fund-raiser for Tryon Palace held in New Bern.  It was cool and clear, and we arrived in New Bern a little early, spending some more time walking around this lovely city.

Antique malls, a fine old hardware store, and lots of places to eat - it looks as if New Bern is well on its way to recovery from Hurricane Florence.

This year, we again found ourselves arriving early at the History Center where the event was held.  Martha has bought her tickets early - they were number 11 and 12 - and we found ourselves spending a little time in the car, waiting for the event to begin at 5:30 p.m.  On the news we listened to our odious president, Potus Trumpus, making a speech in the Rose Garden finally ending his 35-day government shut-down.  The shut-down has affected many local people, including the Coast Guard station out near Fort Macon.  The Methodist Church we attend had announced a dinner for Coast Guard families, and our own little restaurant here at Sands Villas, the Beach Box Eatery, had a sign out front offering a 60% discount for Coast Guard.  So we were glad to sit in our car and listen, essentially, to Trump caving in to Nancy Pelosi.  As one commentator said, "He folded like a cheap lawn chair."

But this blog has tried to avoid our National Emergency - i.e., the person in the White House - and so I will get off that subject.  Martha and I often have to tell each other, "Okay, that's enough.  Let's not bring him with us today."  So we listened to the relatively good news and watched a long line of people gather at the door.  Finally, we were admitted, and we sampled some of the best shrimp and grits we have had out here, as well as Jambalaya, lobster bisque, and clam chowder.  The main attraction, however, was the big tent out back where roasted oysters were being eagerly consumed.

In the past, we have not sampled the oysters; I have watched videos demonstrating how to shuck them with sharp knife in one hand and heavy hand-towel or glove in the other.  This year, we stumbled upon a table in the tent where a friendly young man and woman were shucking them, and were happy to show how it was done.  "Just stick the knife in here," the young man said; "See?" 

He popped one open as a man appeared from out back where the roasting was occurring and dumped a fresh bucket of the delicacies on the table.  "Then what?" I asked.  "Just slurp it down!"  And we did, two or three apiece, enough for a pair of runners preparing for a long run in the morning.

Intervals

We heard the rain begin early this morning while we were still in bed, gently at first, and then when the wind picked up as if buckets of water were being thrown against the windows.

This was not a good morning for running.  I have run in conditions as challenging as this in the past, causing Martha to accuse me of being "not right in the head."  This morning I was right in the head.  The radar on my iPhone looked like this:

But thanks to modern weather forecasting this had been expected; moreover, all my weather apps agreed that it would begin clearing immediately after noon.  We had brought the furniture inside from the balcony in anticipation of the high winds and rain and we were glad we did.

Right on schedule, the rain ceased as if it had been turned off like a faucet a little after 12:00 noon, and in an hour or two the sun was shining.  So we both were able to continue on our running schedule as planned.  We would like to run a 5-K next Saturday, February 2, and the Crystal Coast Half Marathon four weeks after that, so at this point it is important not to miss any important workouts on the ascent up the slope of that steep mountain of slowly improving fitness for racing.

I had run intervals in past years - short distances at race pace or even slightly faster - at the Bath House parking lot; although the exact distance there is unknown (probably close to 200 meters) the effort pays the same dividends in waking up those fast-twitch muscles.  I ran four intervals at 1:07 and felt good the whole time, although during the one-mile cool-down back to the condo I could feel that my quadriceps had been worked hard.  Martha ran five miles, sticking to her own slightly different schedule.

It is a good feeling to run fast again!  (Or, at least, some semblance of fast.)  Still, at my age, I know it is a delicate balance, to push hard but not too hard, and as my running friend Morris always counsels, "Listen to your body."  Today I listened keenly, and everything seemed to sound as it should.

Elliot Coues Nature Trail

The vista of ocean and sky is never the same.  It changes from day to day, hour to hour, sometimes even minute to minute.  When I went out the walkway this morning, it looked as if a veil was being pulled away, west to east, and mottled blue sky was slowly appearing overhead.  By the time I went out to drink my cup of coffee less than a half-hour later, it had completely changed.  To the east, straight to the south, and to the west:  three totally different skies.

It was a nice mild day and we decided to hike the Elliot Coues Nature Trail, which starts and ends at Fort Macon.  It makes a good 3.3-mile loop, half on the sound side and half on the ocean side of Fort Macon Road.

We saw a lot of damage on the sound side - twisted, broken, uprooted trees.  And these trees are "salt-pruned" anyway, bending away from the wind, surviving for decades in this inhospitable climate.  But Hurricane Florence had been too much to withstand.

This part of the trail is nice and shady on a hot, sunny day - live oak trees extending long branches out, red cedar overhead.

At the entrance to the so-called Bath House, the path crosses the road and meanders through more of this maritime forest, and then climbs up and winds around the sand dunes along the channel and the ocean.  Beautiful!  It is what I picture the Scottish moors might look like.

We give thanks for days like these:  comfortable walking, fresh salt air made more fragrant from time to time by Christmas trees along the path, friendly walkers and runners passing us on the trail.  And soon the sun will be setting in its usual blaze of golden light.

"It's all a common glory."

- Emily Dickinson

The Pleasures of Reading

The mild weather this weekend was summed up and brought to a conclusion by rain, as it often is out here.  The light rain began after lunch on Saturday afternoon - nothing really heavy or cold, but enough to make a walk on the beach not very inviting.  Sunday the weather seemed to be wobbling back and forth, as if it could not decide what to do; the sky changed hourly.  And then overnight a frigid cold front rolled in from the west - brilliant blue skies, and a 20-mph wind.  The temperature was 23 degrees and the wind chill made it feel like 11.  I checked the weather in Highlands, and it was 11 degrees with a wind chill of a single lone one degree.  So we were better off here by just a little.

The cold continued all day, and this morning it was just below freezing, but the wind had died down.  Both of us wanted to run but we were undecided about the best time to go.  Finally, we decided to go mid-morning, and by the time we had braved the windy stairwell and gone down the driveway to Fort Macon Road, it felt much better - the bright sun helped, and the wind is always less dautning out on the road, away from the ocean.  As John Bingham famously said, "The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start."

But it is still so cold and windy that a walk on the beach would be uncomfortable.  Temperatures are forecast to rebound dramatically tomorrow, so after running some errands to the Carteret County Library in Beaufort, Friendly Market, and Blue Ocean, we returned here carrying, respectively, an armful of books, a take-away dinner, and a delicious product called wahoo salad from Blue Ocean that we sampled for the first time today.

So as I write at the dining-room table, the shadows are growing long out on the walkway.  Soon the horizon will turn a rosy hue and we will step out on the balcony and marvel at the brilliant sunset, visible from the deck between the adjoining houses.  And then, after dinner, I will settle on the sofa and launch into one of our most pleasurable occupations out here other than running and walking on the beach:  reading.

I will begin on my fourth book since we have been here, and Martha will begin her fifth.  What a wonderful thing it is to read a book, that simple pleasure we have enjoyed since childhood, that transports us into another world, so entirely unlike watching a movie or gazing at an iPhone.  I just love that wonderful, slightly-musty fragrance of an old book!  Is there any better way to spend an evening?

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! 

How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!

When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Havelock 5-K

As I mentioned in last Wednesday's post, Martha had identified a 5-K race in Havelock, home of the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station and mid-way between here and New Bern.  It was a small race and not very well-advertised, benefitting a Catholic school, but it was a good tune-up for some more ambitious races on the horizon, in particular the Crystal Coast Half Marathon and 10-K on March 2.

When I awoke on Saturday morning it was still dark in Atlantic Beach, but by the time I had done my Tai Chi and had breakfast, the sky was growing lighter and lighter, and I went outside to watch the sunrise.  What a gorgeous sky!  The sun had not yet appeared over the ocean, but already the sky overhead was mottled with lovely, glowing colors, and the horizon all around, to the south over the ocean, the north over Bogue Sound, and even to the west, glowed pink and purple, like sound that reverberates around an auditorium.

Some other folks were down on the beach taking photos, too.  It somehow renews my faith in mankind to know that there are still people in this world who have eyes and hearts and spirits open enough to be able to appreciate such a simple event as the daily appearance of the sun.  The waves were quietly washing onto the beach, and the only other life was a seagull or two soaring above the waves.

We left in plenty of time and arrived at the big gymnasium of the Annunciation Catholic School in Havelock - the logo of "The Saints" was painted in the middle of the floor - where registration was taking place.  I do enjoy these small, low-key, laid-back races!  The Race Director was thrilled that participation had increased from 50 to 60 to this year's Fourth Annual record of 92 runners.  We signed up quickly, crossed the busy US-70 at a cross-walk, and began warming up.

The course was flat and fast, and Martha took off immediately.  She told me later her plan had been to run 9-minute miles, and after the race her watch recorded 9:01, 9:01, and 9:05 for the first three miles.  We both realized that the course was longer than 5 kilometers - unusual in a small race (they are usually short) - so we adjusted our times accordingly (I took a split at the 3.1-mile mark of what turned out to be a 3.22-mile "5-K."  But we did not complain - there was chip timing and the results were posted promptly by a timing company the organizers had contracted for the event.  And there were bananas, water, even a pancake breakfast back across the street for those who wanted it.

Martha's time, adjusted for the correct distance, was 28:02, and she realized when we returned to the condo and she checked her race book that this was her fastest 5-K since 2012.  For my part, I was happy that I only felt a slight twinge in that injured right knee in the final mile, and I was even able to pass one tall young woman in the final half-mile.  As it happened, I was the only man in my age group, so I received a First Place medal.  Martha battled it out with a woman a year or two younger (who, it turned out, had barely beaten her at last year's Cocoa 5-K), but she was out-kicked at the finish and took Second Place in an age group containing nine woman.  She finished 14 overall out of 92, and I pointed out that that meant she was in the top sixth of all the finishers.  She is running very well these days!

At the finish line, I began talking to a man in his 50s who was, like me, coming back after an injury, and we were both bemoaning the slower times to which we were having to adjust.  After the race, we sat at a table with the woman who had competed so well with Martha and two of her friends, enjoying the relaxed camaraderie of runners.  Martha told me later that one of the women had said when they saw me, not knowing I was her husband, "Now that's a real runner!"

My head is still a little swollen from that report.  But with a finish time as slow as mine, I was happy to accept the compliment.  A real runner!  I told them, as a real runner, that I had been passed early in the race by a woman pushing a double-stroller holding a little girl.  In the final miles, just after I had passed that tall young woman, I noticed the stroller was slowing and I began to gain on it.  Then I realized that it had stopped, and the mother was running back to retrieve a shoe her little girl had kicked out.  "Maybe I can catch her!" I thought.  But then I felt guilty, as if I should have stopped and let her finish ahead of me.  But that did not prove a problem; she quickly put on the shoe, started running again, and mother, stroller, and child finished a long way ahead of this old, slow real runner.

Beaufort and Clam Chowder

I have not missed my morning Tai Chi since we have been here, except that on Tuesday of this week the walkway was surprisingly covered in frost at that early hour, and so I went through my movements on the concrete walkway right outside our balcony.  Martha has not missed her own morning workouts, either, nor her almost-daily walks on the beach.  Yesterday we both noted that as we end our second week here, we feel lighter, healthier, more attuned to our natural environment, less filled with stress.

Low tide has come around at mid-morning now, so before lunch we walked in the opposite direction from the pier, east toward Fort Macon Park and the Bath House.  The beach was so wide!  And the ocean was quiet, lapping at the sand as gently as if it were the shore of a lake.

We found plenty of shells, high on the beach at what they call the wrack line, which marks the last high tide.  Up close to the dunes the Park Rangers had placed more Christmas trees, and Martha even spotted some tinsel on one of them.

There was a large colony of seagulls at the Bath House, a place where I have seen them often before.  They are always a joy to watch; I approached carefully to take a photo and they permitted me to to come within a very specific distance, and then they leapt into the air and soared gracefully away.

One of the reasons they congregate here is that people feed them.  I don't know why anyone would want to feed seagulls, other than perhaps to see huge numbers of them thronging the air all around.  A woman on the walkway had opened a bag of some kind of food, and it was a little scary, almost like a scene from Hitchcock's The Birds:

The remains of an old stone jetty extend out into the ocean here, and it is a little odd to see such large rocks, which must have come from miles and miles from here.   Where is the nearest quarry, I wondered?  Somewhere in the Piedmont?

After lunch we drove over the big new bridge to Beaufort for the 8th Annual Clam Chowder Cook-off, a benefit for the N. C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.  We would not have known that there had been a hurricane as powerful as Florence here only four months ago, other than tell-tale signs like brand-new fences and new siding here and there.  The waterfront looked as peaceful as always, and all the little restaurants and businesses were open.

I walked the few blocks to the Old Burying Ground but was disappointed to find it closed; a family walking by the gate at the same time told me it had been closed since the hurricane.  I looked over the fence and it did not appear that there was any damage, but there must have been fallen branches and perhaps damaged gravestones.

The grave of the "Girl in the Barrel of Rum" was visible from the Craven Street gate.  The story is told that the girl begged her father to take her to London, and he promised to return her to her mother's arms.  She died on the voyage home and her father brought her back in an empty barrel of rum.  To this day her little grave is piled high with coins, beads, flowers, tokens; some locals think it brings them good luck in their own voyage through life.

We had attended the Cook-off last year and had enjoyed it thoroughly.  While we were waiting for it to  begin, we walked out to look at this beautiful sunset over Beaufort Harbor.

I walked farther down Front Street to get a different perspective, and Martha called me on her phone. "Come back!" she said.  "There's a blue heron here!"  And there was, right off the dock on the harbor.  Perhaps this majestical bird had been the same one that had left that huge footprint in the sand at Fort Macon yesterday.  Martha took this photo:

And I, clumsily approaching on tip-toe, sent it soaring into the air as I usually do, and it winged its way off into the sunset over Beaufort Harbor.

Then a hundred hungry men and women crowded into the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, part of the Maritime Museum across the street, and sampled four different chowders and four different corn breads.

"I think I like this one the best," I told the young lady ladling out the tasty Downeast-style chowder I favored.  "But I just need to make sure!"  That's my choice (and also Martha's) - the one at the top in the photo.  Perfectly seasoned and not too heavy.

We told Gina, the director of the event, who remembered us from last year, that we were running a race in the morning.  "Some runners like to carbo-load," I told her, "But we clam-load!"

The Natural Side of Fort Macon

One of the advantages to being a "Friend of Fort Macon" is access to their newsletter, and that is how we found out about the nature hike today and also how we found out about the musket-firing demonstration last year.  We showed up at 10:00 a.m. and discovered that our guide was none other than Ben Fleming (see post of January 9), who had been placing Christmas trees along the beach; we were the only two people taking the hike that morning and he seemed pleased to have such a tiny, informal group so that there would be time for questions.

 
As with the musket demonstration last year, we found Ben to be friendly and informative, and passionate about the Fort, its history, and the nature surrounding it.  We started out on the north side of the Fort which borders the Coast Guard Station.  Martha asked about a ground plant which we both thought resembled what we call Galax in Highlands (see picture in my post of January 6), and which seemed to grow out of the bare sand in some places.  He said it was called pennywort and it was the bane of local gardeners because it grows so abundantly everywhere.

Next along the path was a good stand of wax myrtle, or bayberry; Ben plucked a few leaves and rolled and crushed them in his hands, and we could indeed smell the familiar scent we associate with bayberry candles.  It was a good insect repellent, he said, and sometimes when they were out working and ran out of insect repellent they would rub it on their exposed skin.

Yaupon was next long the path (I did not get a good photo), a type of evergreen holly.  Local Native Americans made a tea from its leaves called "the black drink," which caused vomiting and purged their bodies in preparation for a long journey.  

The trail was lined with aromatic red cedar, which competed in fragrance with the Christmas trees piled up in the nearby parking lot waiting to be moved to the beach, and they were badly damaged by Hurricane Florence; unlike the live oaks trees, Ben said, they could not shed their leaves and so the wind simply blew them over.

Winged sumac had also been damaged, blown down almost sideways, their roots exposed; the rangers did not know whether it would survive or not.

We also spotted prickly pear along the way, which he said was quite painful to the touch.  Although the sharp spines could be pulled out of the skin of the unfortunate passerby who fell in it, tiny itchy quills remained behind, so small that they could not be seen; they could best be removed by applying duct tape and pulling them out.

Cat briars were another hazard.  Ben said they sometimes planted them along areas they did not want to be disturbed, barbed wire to the hapless hiker.  At the root of the briar was a large tuber the size of a sweet potato, which he said could grow to an enormous size.

Even sharper were the Spanish bayonets, which locals sometimes planted under their windows to deter burglars.  I reached out and tentatively touched one of the sharp tips, and it was as sharp as a kitchen knife.

From there, we walked down to the beach; it was low tide, as it had been during my run yesterday.  Martha told him we had spotted a Portuguese man-of-war in the surf the previous week, and Ben told us something that I did not know at all.  Notorious as a very painful stinging creature (although seldom fatal), he said if he found one he would puncture it with a stick, dig a hole with the heel of his boot, and bury it safely under the sand.  The man-of-war appears to be a single organism, but it is actually four different organisms, working in synergy, each of which cannot survive without the others.  Each one provides a function for the survival of the others:  the top gas-filled bag which allows it to float, tentacles for feeding, tentacles for defense, and the bottom organ that deals with reproduction.  It seemed an apt metaphor for society itself.

It is truly a revelation to walk the beach with someone who knows what he is looking at.  Ben began picking up tiny shells and talking about them.

Clockwise from the top left is a jingle shell, so thin that it easily crumbles into shiny flakes.  Then a tiny whelk, the same whelks that we saw seagulls pick up and drop in the parking lot at the Bath House last year.  "That's actually a learned behavior in gulls," Ben said.  Then we found a sea-bean, a small pod washed up here in this place from some distant land.  Also known as drift seeds, they are seeds and fruits adapted for long-distance dispersal by water, usually produced by tropical trees and carried on ocean currents for perhaps thousands of miles.  And finally, a smooth stone, a "worry stone," worn smooth by the ocean.  They are often carried in the pocket and gently massages by thumb and forefinger, according to Wikipedia:  "This action of moving one's thumb back and forth across the stone can reduce stress."  As can walking on this beach, I thought.

"Is that like sea glass?" I asked, and he said yes it was, and immediately spotted this piece of jagged sea glass, not yet worn smooth by the ocean.  I have been looking for sea glass for many years - they say you cannot find sea glass; it finds you - and Ben simply plucked one up out of the sand, which makes me think that it is absolutely everywhere if a person can slow down and look carefully.

We came upon some huge bird tracks, almost as big as my hand, which Ben thought must have come from a blue heron, the largest of the herons and common in this area.  We must have missed it by only only an hour or two, or a few minutes.

We walked up onto the dunes then, and Ben explained that this entire area had once been ocean, which at high tide would lap onto the road to Fort Macon.  The wide expanse of sand dunes was due to the success of the Christmas tree program, begun in the 1960s; the carefully-placed trees retain the blowing sand and created all these dunes, some of them ten feet above sea level.  Here is a Christmas tree trunk sticking out, still visible under a dune:

We came upon a concrete wall that extended above the sand, which we had noticed in previous hikes.  Ben told us, amazingly, that this was a wall designed to stabilize and enforce the area around the Fort by Robert E. Lee, who was an engineer at the Fort.

All around us, sand dunes extended, perhaps a half-mile from the road.  It was an amazing feeling to know that beneath our feet these dunes rested on the remains of Christmas trees, which came most likely from the mountains where we live, and which sat in hundreds and hundreds of homes in the area, lit and decorated and spreading gently over gift-wrapped packages on Christmas morning while "O Tannenbaum" playsed in the background.

"Thank you for your time," we told Ben.  "We may have been a small group, but we were an interested and appreciative one!"