Harkers Island

We have not strayed very far from the condo since our arrival, but today we decided to pack a picnic and drive to Harkers Island.  It's a pleasant drive through typical "Down East" country, first across the Newport River to Beaufort on that new, soaring, appropriately-named Beaufort Highrise Bridge, and then on narrow two-lane roads along marshes across the North River, through Otway and Straits, and finally across the drawbridge to Harkers Island.  I always take a picture of this gloriously decaying abandoned store just outside Beaufort, slowly falling apart from equal parts of neglect and hurricanes.

The main attraction for us on Harkers Island is the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center, a testament to the hard work of local historians striving to preserve their heritage.  

Volunteers were at work decorating for the holidays, which featured the biggest crab-pot Christmas tree we have seen thus far.  It's a nice place to have a picnic, under tall live-oak trees at a quiet picnic table which we discovered a year or two ago after attempting to picnic at the Shell Point Picnic Area on the shores of Back Sound and being pestered so much by throngs of gulls that it brought to mind Hitchcock's The Birds.

The Museum was not scheduled to open until 2:00 p.m., so we settled down to lunch, trying to decide whether to walk around the grounds for two hours or return on another day.  After lunch, we occupied ourselves looking at the decorations, including plenty of crab-pot trees and a wonderful garden by local Master Gardeners which included some local plants with which we were unfamiliar.

Walking back to our car, a woman who had been decorating the grounds came by and said, "Do you want to come inside and look around?"  She later introduced herself as Karen Willis Amspacher, the Executive Director.  "Just give me two minutes!" and she went around to the back of the building.

Karen is a woman of boundless energy and unreserved friendliness.  "I won't turn on the lights," she said, "Until you can look around at the trees."  The first floor was filled with magically decorated trees, an exhibit called "Gallery of Trees:  Telling our Story," decorated by twenty or so community organizations, such as the Core Sound Quilt Crew, the Bring Back the Lights Committee, the Fishermen's Association, and local veterans.  They were dazzling in the dim light of the museum, which we soon realized we had all to ourselves except for Karen, two hours before it was scheduled to open.

The Museum had been badly damaged by Hurricane Florence in September of 2018, and was not open the last two years we were here.  That hurricane did extensive damage in the area, making hundreds homeless and causing millions of dollars in damage.  Some folks have only recently returned to their homes after two years.  All of the floors, the roof, and most of the sheetrock had to be replaced, and all of the exhibits in the 22,000 SF museum were moved out while restoration took place.  Remarkably, one of the walls that remained had the three words on it left over from an exhibit called "Harm's Way" that had opened in the summer:  RESPONSE.  RECOVERY.  RESILIENCE.  Karen gave us a book that described in great detail the work that had been done before the building finally opened this year.  We discovered with pleasure that our own names were listed in the back since we were donors through our membership.

We had purchased a DVD on the so-called Carolina Brogue three years ago, the distinct dialect that residents here speak, sometimes sounding almost like a cockney accent.  "I hear from your accent that you're local," I told Karen at one point.  "Yes, I'm from 'On'," she replied.  "We're from 'Off''!" I said.  "Yes, your Dingbatters," she laughed.  These are all local expressions we have learned from attending some programs on the brogue over the years.  

We Dingbatters happily wandered through the museum, marveling at how well the restoration had been done.  The library has always been a particular favorite of mine.  What a wonderful place to spend a rainy afternoon, browsing through the  books on local history, settling down into a comfortable chair.

At the end of a long corridor was the community room, where quilt-making, exhibits, and other events were held.  There was a little stage and Martha spotted a piano, not just any piano but a fine Baldwin grand piano perfectly in-tune, which along with everything else had been damaged and restored.  After obtaining permission from Karen I played for awhile, a couple of Bach pieces I have committed (mostly) to memory.

Last year I found that even two months away from a piano had made me rusty, so this year just before we left I found a full-sized keyboard at our local thrift store to take with us, which I have been playing here in the condo.  So it was nice to play on a real piano in this big room with wonderful acoustics.

Apart from the Gathering Room, the many models of ships, and of course the decoys on display, there is a wonderful local history display upstairs.  All of the local communities are represented as one wanders past unique displays of tools, quilts, memorabilia, photographs, and other exhibits put together by volunteers from all of the tiny surrounding communities:  Atlantic, Davis Shore, Williston, Bettie, Gloucester, Salter Path, and of course Harkers Island. 

On one wall was displayed half a dozen inductees to the Carteret County Sports Hall of Fame, and we realized that we knew one of them:  Mindy Ballou Fitzpatrick.

A talented basketball player who had played professionally, and also an award-winning surfer, Mindy and her husband Matt own Friendly Market, opened in 2008 and one of the most successful new businesses in Morehead City (see post of November 25), the source for our Thanksgiving Dinner last week.  They are very hands-on, and we often see them both there, tall athletic Mindy invariably wearing basketball shorts as if she might be getting ready for a pickup game after work.  Martha recalls asking her before she realized who she was, "Are you getting ready to go for a run?" and she had replied, "Maybe!"  

We were still all by ourselves in the museum, and after finding Karen doing something energetic in a storage room, we thanked her and said we would be back again.  We will, and soon.  All along the road in Harkers Island we had seen houses decorated for Christmas, preparing for the annual Bring Back the Lights parade.  The most popular decoration is this unique anchor, which we saw at nearly every house we passed. We'll make a point of driving down this road just after dark sometime before Christmas.

When we returned to the condo, it was just past low tide so we walked to Oceanana Pier and back.  I noticed that Martha was picking up shells all along the way, not just pieces of sand dollars or whelks or other collectibles, but ordinary-looking shells.  I thought little about it until I discovered later that she had woven the shells into a little wreath with a star fish in the center.

A Common Glory

I had not intended for this to be a daily blog, but as I look back at previous posts I realize I have not missed a single day since we arrived.  This is surprising because our circumstances this year are so circumscribed due to Covid-19.  We have not been to New Bern, Beaufort, Harkers Island, or any of our other usual haunts, as long-time readers have probably noticed.  I don't know if we will ever return to those carefree days, but in the meantime we are making the best of things, staying active and taking advantage of these beautiful, warm days of November to enjoy the beach.

Saturday morning has traditionally been my day for a long run, and I have missed running with friends in Highlands.  But there is plenty to see here and we have an almost perfect route, as I have mentioned before, from the condo to Fort Macon State Park.  It was a nice, cool morning in the mid-50s and not much traffic when I started out.  In less than a mile, the sidewalk and buildings end and the Park begins.  The one-mile mark is just beyond this sign, and shortly after that is the entrance to the Picnic Area on the right.

The Elliott Coues Natural Trail starts at the Fort, runs along the salt marsh to the left, all the way to the Picnic Area, then picks up on the right in sand dunes with views of the ocean.  There were a lot of walkers and some runners out on the trail this morning, and you can sometimes overhear their conversation because although screened by thick live oak and myrtle it is not far from the road.  Cyclists going by will also be often talking.  I heard a snatch of conversation from one of them today - "It's called a crow's nest!" - and wondered what that meant.

The next landmark comes at about 1.70 miles, the Union Artillery Placement historical marker on the right, at the top of what I suppose they might call a "hill" out here, high enough in any case to see the fort and start lobbing artillery shells at those defending it.

The Fort is a history buff's dream, filled with exhibits and artifacts, and we have often explored it in some detail.  One year we attended a live musket firing demonstration and heard a description of the horribly deadly kind of warfare that took place during the Civil War, where soldiers stood so close to one another that killing must have seemed more personal than today's slaughter.  The siege was part of Union Army General Ambrose Burnside's campaign in North Carolina, and the Fort was a strategic target because it had been designed to defend Beaufort Harbor.  Commanded by Colonel Moses J. White, the Fort was poorly equipped and not designed to sustain a siege against artillery.  It surrendered fairly quickly after the thick walls began to crumble and prompted by fears that the magazine would be breached.

A little farther, on the left, is the U. S. Coast Guard Station, a big facility that often has big cutters docked behind it in the harbor, visible from the Fort's parking lot.  We have both noticed that on Saturday mornings we invariably smell the aroma of doughnuts being fried as we run by.

The two-mile mark is just before the Station, and a little past that is another historical marker indicating where the wreck of Blackbeard the Pirate's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, was found in 1996, sunk in 25 feet of water a mile off-shore.

Artifacts from the ship are on display at the N. C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort, a very fine little museum that we have often visited and where we have attended "bag gams," where visitors can bring a bag lunch and hear a talk, or "gam."  That may sound pretty boring, but we have actually watched some fascinating slide shows about everything from whales (there is a fine skeleton on display) to fishing nets to nautical love stories.  

Entering the gates of the Fort itself, the road curves to the left and cannons can be seen on top of the walls.  That white fence is often a welcome sight, heralding the approach to the Fort with its water fountain (which we do not use these days) and restrooms.

Along the sidewalk to the Visitor's Center, I spotted something dark hopping along in the grass.  It did not look like the cottontail rabbit I know from Highlands; this one had no tail to speak of, short round ears, and a dark brown color.  I asked a man and woman walking by if they knew what it was.  "Looks like a rabbit to me," he declared.  I rolled my eyes inwardly.  "Doesn't look like any I've ever seen," I said.  "It has no tail."  In retrospect, they were probably wondering why a grown man had never seen a rabbit before.  The creature continued to nibble grass and penny wort, not at all frightened.  When I returned to the condo I looked it up on my computer and found it was a marsh rabbit, which I had indeed never seen before.

We compared notes when we completed out runs, and I told Martha that I felt 100% better than last Saturday after completing six miles.  She, too, said she had what she called a Rave Run - two miles out to the Coast Guard Station, and two miles back, at a pace faster than she has run in  months; one of her miles was an extraordinary 10:45.

After lunch - shrimp quesadillas made by Martha - we went out to Lowes Foods to pick up a few things.  Mask compliance there and in the other stores we have visited is nearly 100%, and today there was a sweet-looking lady sitting in the lobby, tallying up the number of customers entering and exiting, and also I presume enforcing the mask mandate.  I thought she looked a little like Francis Bavier, who played Aunt Bee on the Andy Griffin Show years ago.  It was a good decision by management to place her there.  A zealous anti-masker would have been humbled by this sweet woman, and would no more have entered without a mask than walk in Aunt Bee's back door without wiping his feet on the welcome mat.

Now, as I am writing this post at the dining room table, I can look out the parted balcony doors and see that sunset will be coming within the half-hour, lighting up the horizon with the daily light show on clear days like this.  People staying here (we included) will sometimes walk down the walkway to the dune-top deck in a kind of enchantment, cameras in hand, drawn to yet another sunset.  As Emily Dickinson would have said, "It's all a common glory."

Black Friday

There seems to be some dispute about the origin of the term "Black Friday."  I found four possible origins on the internet, each one a little more palatable to eager modern shoppers.  One story claims that Southern plantation owners in the 1800s could buy slaves at discount on that day. (Could that ugly story be true?)  Another claims that the term started with the crash of the gold market in 1869.  Yet another claims that the term was used by police in Philadelphia to describe the heavy traffic on the sidewalks and streets of that city on the day after Thanksgiving.  Modern retailers like to say that it marks that point in the year when a business begins to turn a profit, moving from the red into the black.

Whatever its origins, the last place any of us should be is crowded into a department story on this day.  We don't participate much in our consumer culture these days in any case, but when we do we like to shop local.  And the only places you could shop out here in Atlantic Beach might be Ace Hardware, the Dollar Store, or Food Lion, all of which we visited today and none of which were crowded.  Instead of shopping, we did what many of our neighbors seemed to be doing today - we went out on the beach, where people were fishing and shelling and playing and running.  We walked about a mile, down to the breakers out from the Picnic Area, where last weekend I had seen so many surfers congregating.  They were out on the waves again today and seemed to be having fun.

As this day marks the official start of the Christmas season, that means we can play Christmas Jazz instead of Cool Jazz at dinnertime.  And I have been noticing some decorations have begun to appear, scattered discreetly around the condo:  festive stickers on the mirrors, a tiny tinsel tree as the centerpiece of the table from which I am writing, and other cute seasonal decor.  And most of the afternoon, between a trip to the hardware store and an exploration of an electrical outlet that is not operational, I somehow managed to hang a string of Christmas lights on our balcony. 

Groups of beach-goers were coming back while I worked and could not avoid seeing what I was doing, as our balcony is directly over the walkway.  "What a nice thing, to hang Christmas lights out for your wife!" one lady called up to me.  "I only wish it was 30 or 40 degrees!" I said; it was in the 70s on the deck, and I was soon breaking out in a sweat in the hot sun, conditions I normally do not experience when hanging Christmas lights.  Another man called up, "Merry Christmas!"  Christmas decorations seem to gladden the hearts of everybody.

Thanksgiving Day

This was one of the most unique Thanksgivings that we have ever celebrated.  A brief shower blew in from the southwest this morning - I watched it approach the land on my iPhone's radar app - but it quickly moved out to be replaced by partial sunshine and a balmy 68-degree breeze.  We spent much of the morning texting and calling all of our scattered loved ones and friends, and then I went for a two-mile run.  I remembered all of the Turkey Trots that I have completed in the past on this day - far-flung places like Charleston and Orlando and Winston-Salem and Greensboro - so after a warmup mile out toward Fort Macon, I picked up the pace as if I was running a race, clocking an 11:13 mile, my fastest in some time. After I returned to the condo, Martha took a long walk on the beach.

These activities fell under the category of what my family, my Dad in particular, called "Working up an Appetite," which we always had to do on Thanksgiving morning.  He was not a very athletic man in middle age, but he never failed to take my brother and me on a brisk one- or two -mile walk, and it always seemed to be a clear, cold, windy day.  In retrospect I realize its purpose was not so much for working up an appetite - the aroma of turkey roasting in the oven had already done that - as to obey my Mom's instructions to get the boys out of the house.  Martha and I talked about our Thanksgivings growing up and throughout the years together while we heated up our Thanksgiving dinner from Friendly Market, described in my previous post, which lived up to and even exceeded our expectations.  Out the open sliding glass doors we could see and hear the ocean while we ate.

A large number of families have arrived here in the past day or two, gathering for this traditional holiday in houses next to us and here in the condo building.  The CDC has urged everyone to stay home, so we hope that these gatherings, many of them multi-generational, do not contribute to the spread of Covid-19.  At the house next to us, a family was setting up tables on an outside deck, which seems just a little safer.  Children are everywhere, playing on the swings out on the lawn and running out the walkway to that siren call of the beach and its huge sandbox to play in and its chilly breaking waves.  Three young boys played a game of football on the lawn, not just throwing the ball but hiking it and passing it off to a running back - very impressive, and reminiscent of football games sleepily followed on TV after dinner on Thanksgivings in the past.  Two little shirtless brothers, perhaps eight and nine years old, one of them with an endearing Mohawk haircut (can you still get one of those?), ran out the walkway like pigeons released from their cage.  They had more fun than I realized was possible spraying themselves with the hose on the walkway that adults sedately use to rinse sand from their shoes.  Later I saw Mohawk out on the beach enthusiastically digging a deep hole in the sand while his brother filled bucket after bucket of water from the crashing surf.

After dinner, while we were watching all of this activity, one or two kites began to rise into the air just out from the condo, and then more and more of them, a veritable feast of kites taking to the air.

Some of them were dazzling, one of them circling and circling wildly, and then suddenly plummeting to the ground.

So this is what people do here at the beach for Thanksgiving, I realize.  They eat dinner, of course, but then they go out to play, to fish, to fly kites, to gather shells.  I strolled along myself after awhile, trying to socially-distance myself, saying "Happy Thanksgiving" to complete strangers.  Surely this is the most American of holidays, from that possibly mythical day in 1621 when the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans sat down together, to Abraham Lincoln's proclamation in the midst of a civil war, to all of the memorable gatherings we celebrated when we were children.

I returned from my stroll on the beach and spotted Martha on the balcony, deep in her latest book.  I, too, have begun a long book, and I intend to join her there as soon as I finish this post. So to the small handful of scattered followers of my blog, I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.

Crab Pots and Turkey

We both went running again today, the same route and the same distance as Monday.  It occurred to me today that the route we usually take on the bicycle lane along Fort Macon Road is as perfect as it gets.  This time of year there is little traffic, and the lane is about 36" wide, the same as most high school tracks.  The only difference is that, from time to time, a car or truck will roar by at 45 mph (why is the speed limit so high on this road?) inches from your elbow.

For a handful of days each month, low tide makes it possible to run back to the condo on the beach, either from the Picnic Area as we did today, or all the way back from Fort Macon.  It is hard to describe how wonderful it can be to run along the ocean, the sand firm and smooth and with little camber on this wide south-facing beach.  A colony of gulls will often be wading in the surf, looking for breakfast, and they will run out of the way on those bright yellow twigs of legs, or as a last resort rise into the air on outspread winds, annoyed at having to use that much energy just to avoid a runner.  

After lunch, we drove to Friendly Market, a place we have come to patronize often while staying out here.  The store manager, Ray, recognized us when we arrived this year (as did Maria at Blue Ocean fish market).  Although their name probably derives from their location at the corner of Bridges Street and Friendly Road, we like to think it is because of the unfailingly friendly employees there.

We were there to pick up Thanksgiving Dinner, which Martha had the foresight to order quite some time ago while we were still in Highlands.  And what a feast it will prove to be!  Roasted turkey breast, gravy, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, yeast rolls, and pumpkin pie, all intended for two people, but it looks like there will be plenty of leftovers.  There was already a line of people waiting to pick up their dinners.

At the other end of the parking lot was the nursery, which this time of year features fall plants of every variety and flowers and bushes of rosemary and locally-made crab pot Christmas trees, made from crab trap wire.

Friendly Market's nursery area was also Christmas tree central, with row after row of fragrant Frasier fir trees lined up, probably originating not far from Highlands.

This will be out first Thanksgiving here in Atlantic Beach, but we have often spent the holiday away from home, sometimes running Turkey Trots, visiting my family when they lived in Florida, or going to those wonderful dinners hosted by Martha's Aunt Lizette years ago.  I told her on the phone the other day that, in retrospect, I didn't know how she managed to pull together such a feast, unfailingly delicious, and featuring a huge variety of side dishes, while often hosting some of the family who were staying there.  "I don't know how I did it, either!" she said.  "But I was younger then."

We have a lot to be thankful for this year, despite the loss that every year brings.  We talked about that some in the car on the way back to the condo, and we will talk about it again tomorrow as we sit down to dinner, return thanks, and count our many blessings.

Ordinary Days

On a clear, cloudless morning, sunrise is a dramatic event at the beach, first a tiny golden speck of light appearing on the horizon like the beam from a lighthouse, then the rising arc slowly blooming into a perfect circle, higher and higher.  It would be accompanied by grand music, like Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra memorialized in Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Today it was a quieter, more modest affair, heralded by an orchestra noodling at first light, as if waiting for the conductor to appear.  The concert would have begun with some quiet strings playing a lovely melody softly from the silence, the clouds glowing in baroque shapes.

I wonder when I will grow tired of writing about sunrises?  Probably not before readers of this blog will.  But I enjoy during these sabbaticals paying attention, living out here in a different kind of world than we usually inhabit, where there is always something to see in that big sky, that big ocean, even on ordinary days.  On Sunday I wrote in this blog:  "It's true:  I'm bored to death, and I am absolutely loving it."  That is not exactly true.  I am never bored out here.  I can sit for an hour on the dune-top deck listening to birds and watching the sky and be completely absorbed.  And being absorbed is the opposite of being bored.

We manage to stay active very well out here, walking and running much more than we could in cold Highlands during the depths of the winter.  I had become accustomed in past years to visiting the large and well-equipped gym at the Morehead City Recreation Park, but due to Covid-19 I did not think this would be a safe thing to do.  So last week I bought two 25-pound hand weights, and this morning I found that I could complete a perfectly adequate workout in addition to the usual pushups, squats, and planks with which I start each day.  Martha, too, manages very well with her set of exercise DVDs called "Fit in 10" with which she starts the day.  I have grown accustomed to the enthusiastic voice of Larysa in the background, the trainer featured in the DVDs, encouraging her recruits:  "The more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it!"  "Don't forget to breathe!" 

Before lunch, we took a walk on the beach.  It was low tide, and overnight the temperature had dropped into the 40s with a stiff 10-mph wind, so we had it mostly to ourselves except for one or two fishermen and some shell-gatherers.  There was no shortage of shells.

I always  wonder how sharp an eye a person would have to possess to find a piece of sea glass, or a lost piece of jewelry, in that profusion of shells.

A little farther on, we came upon some shore birds, tiny sanderlings that I used to call sandpipers until corrected by Randy Newman on a bird hike.  Here was a true sandpiper, so large that he might have been a willet (Randy would have known, as well as its sex, age, and eating habits).

The fine sand makes a good  blackboard - a tabula rasa, a clean slate wiped clean by the tides every day - and we often find declarations of love and tender aspirations written in the sand with a shell instead of a piece of chalk, like this one.

We know nothing about Emily except that today is her birthday - the message was written only a few feet from the incoming tide - and that somebody loved her enough to write this.  In a little while, we came upon this, written in the same handwriting.

This inspired Martha to write down some words of her own.  It is hard not to be grateful in such a place and with Thanksgiving the day after tomorrow.

We wrote this one together.  The first time we ever rented a house in Duck 20 years ago, this was the name of the small house where we stayed.  It was a beautiful house and we stayed there one or two other times as well, owned and decorated by an artist who still has a gallery in Edenton.  Alas, Peace and Plenty was sold and replaced by some philistine of a developer with a tall, arrogant, ten-bedroom rental.  But we have retained the name and the concept and now we call our own home in Clear Creek Peace and Plenty.

We reached Oceanana Fishing Pier, about three-quarters of a mile away.  It was occupied today by only a handful of fishermen, perhaps because of the nippy breeze or poor fishing conditions at low tide.

All of that writing in the sand was erased by the tide before we returned.  But Martha found this almost perfect whelk bobbing in the surf and carried it back, together with the memories of a wonderful morning on the beach.

After lunch, we sat outside on the deck for just a little while, being careful not to absorb too much sunshine at first.  I had some spots burned off my head by my dermatologist just before we left Highlands and am well aware of the damage that too much sun can cause. 

Some workmen arrived at the house next to us and began unloading what looked like new kitchen cabinets from a truck.  Martha was reading and tuned them out, but I enjoyed listening to these men, laughing and wisecracking in loud voices that we could hear perfectly.  Whatever you do, I learned, do not install bamboo floors if you have a dog.  One of the men, perhaps both of them, owned a boat, as nearly every local seems to out here.  "What is it's draft?"  "Three-foot six."  They continued to talk amicably as they lugged heavy cabinets up the outside stairs to the deck in that easy way that men have as they work together in that camaraderie of common purpose.

How can a person be bored in this world we live in?  The sun never rises in exactly the same place on the horizon nor hurls its splendid light into the clouds in the same way.  There are always new and interesting fish in the sea and shore birds skipping in the surf.  The ocean is never exactly the same; today, despite the brisk breeze, it was remarkably calm, lapping at the shore like a big lake.  And books to read!  And contractors upon whom we can eavesdrop and capture and place into a blog that they will never read.  And somewhere out in the harbor, bobbing a little in the afternoon tide, a fishing boat lies at anchor, having a draft of exactly three-foot six.  On another ordinary day.

Kite-Flying and Other Past-Times

A storm moved in from the ocean overnight, just fog and then light rain at first, enough to make us move the deck furniture inside.  But by the time we went to bed a spectacular thunderstorm had developed, bright flashes of lightning out on the horizon.  We could hear the wind throwing fistfuls of rain against the windows during the night.  It is always an occasion when a storm comes through out here, and I think I enjoy them as much as I do the cloudless nights spangled with stars.

By this morning, the rain had stopped, and just before sunrise I could see a dark blue band of clouds moving away, light blue sky on the horizon to the south and the west sliding in.  By 8:00 there were no clouds at all, another peerless day of sunshine, blue sky, and a light breeze.  I set out on my run at exactly 8:34, which coincided with the time for low tide.  What a difference a difficult run separated by a day of rest can make; my legs felt good!  I turned in at the Picnic Area, and decided to run a pair of "Picnic Area Intervals," that is, very fast repeats at my 400-meter pace on the straight section of the parking lot, from the "Yield" sign to the trash can at the other end where, after Christmas, discarded trees will be stacked for placement out on the dunes to stabilize them.  It's probably about an eight of a mile.  I was pleased with the results:  1:04, and then 1:03.  Running high-intensity intervals is a good workout for any runner, and I felt buoyed by the fast times.  

I ran out onto the beach then, and back to the condo at just after low tide, the sand flat and smooth, and the Atlantic Ocean breaking just at my left elbow.  I passed several shell-seekers on the way, and two or three children squealing with delight at being permitted to play in a huge sandbox.  Dogs, too, seem to revert to being puppies again at the beach, splashing into the surf after a thrown tennis ball, never tiring, always eager for more.

I sat on the dune-top deck for awhile, then came inside for water.  My job this morning was to use the "Limpiadora Profunda" Proheat 2X Revolution steam cleaner on all of the upholstery in the condo, and I got to work right away while Martha went out for her own run.  Sidelined by an injury, this was her first run since October 3, and it went very well.  I saw her return an hour or so later as she came up on the walkway and stretched, then sat for a long while on the deck.  When she came inside, I learned that she had been watching dolphins out in the surf, pretty close to shore.  She had also been watching a man flying kites out on the beach, and from the balcony I could see one or two of them, swooping and cavorting on the light breeze.  I thought to myself that it was a wonderful thing that these kites were being flown by a man, not a child, or a man showing his child how to fly a kite.  What a simple joy it is to watch a kite rise in the air magically, carried aloft on the breeze, tethered to earth by a thin string.  Like surfing and fishing and running intervals, kite-flying is an honorable past-time, is it not?

After lunch, we returned to the grocery store to stock up on supplies, which included crab cakes from Blue Ocean that would become the centerpiece of our dinner tonight.  Martha also found exactly what she had been looking for - a box of fresh herbs to grow, parsley and rosemary and cilantro and basil, in a sunny place in front of the TV, which we never turn on - "A week of flavor in one little pot."  The rosemary went into rosemary roasted potatoes to accompany the crab cakes.  And who would have thought we could find fresh corn on the cob this time of year?

Sunday Morning

We realized when we came here this year that we would not be able to do all of the things that we have enjoyed in the past due to Covid-19 restrictions.  One of those things is attending the First United Methodist Church over in Morehead City, which Martha's aunt Lizette told us about when we first visited here.  They have a tradition of giving first-time visitors a small gift bag containing information about the church and a loaf of delicious sweet bread, which is a lovely welcome.  We were surprised the first time, but every year since then we have the feeling that Pastor Powell Osteen recognizes and remembers us and therefore we are ineligible for the bread again.  Like all Methodist preachers, he has a long memory.  The FUMC has begun actual worship services, I think, but at half capacity as the Methodist Church in Highlands is doing.  So I have been content to listen to Powell's excellent sermons via Facebook.

So this Sunday morning we stayed here at the condo, enjoying an omelet which I have been in the habit of preparing on Sunday mornings.  I went out before breakfast for my Tai Chi, and then again to drink my first cup of coffee.  Clouds were moving in, as predicted for today, but this only makes the sky more interesting to watch.  Tumultuous shapes gathered on the horizon to the south.

I knew that it was almost time for sunrise - it has been rising later and later every morning, 6:47 on Friday, 6:48 on Saturday, and 6:49 today according to my sunrise chart, and of course this will continue until winter solstice, when the night will be the longest and the day the shortest of the year.  This lovely time of morning is what my sunrise charts calls First Light, the time before sunrise when the sky begins to brighten.  In the east, I could see behind the clouds a golden light, diffused and radiating upward across the sky in rose-colored echoes - beautiful!

There was not much stirring on the beach.  It was low tide, and a woman was gathering shells in a white styrofoam cup.  A few children farther down the beach were squealing in the surf in what must have been very chilly water - all of the surfers I have seen have been wearing wetsuits.  A surf fisherman was standing with rod in hand. 

I like to eat fish, but I confess that I know nothing about fishing.  But seeing these men (and sometimes women) standing before the immensity of the ocean, watching the waves breaking one after one, watching the brown pelicans drift by, hoping perhaps to catch something for dinner (but not the main point):  that seems like an occupation that I could enjoy.

Just down the beach to the east stands a row of rainbow-hued houses that I have always enjoyed seeing, lined up side by side along the dunes, a placed called Sea Dreams.  

In fact, last year when we were staying here we chanced upon this picture in a local gallery, which reminded us of Sea Dreams, and we bought it and hung it in the condo in honor of Lizette.

There is always something to see on the beach, like this miraculous small plant named pennywort that seems to grow out of the sand itself rather than from anything that I would call soil.

On my way back to the walkway, I found another piece of the sand dollar that we are assembling, piece by piece, making something whole from all the broken pieces.  This is a good place for doing that.

In the afternoon, Martha went for a walk on the beach, and I sat on the dune-top deck for awhile, soaking up the sunshine.  Martha took this photo of a jellyfish that had just washed in and was not yet lying flat on the sand - a beautiful, delicate creature.

While I was sitting on the deck, I heard the deep booming sound of a freighter's horn blowing from the direction of the Morehead City Channel.  I had returned to the condo when Martha called me and told me to come out and see the huge freighter.  With my binoculars, I could read the name on the side:  SPLIETHOFF - a shipping company that has been around for a hundred years.

It occurs to me that any person casually surfing the internet who should come upon this blog might be saying to themselves, "This man must be bored to death, taking pictures of jellyfish and freighters, writing about the tides and the sunrise."  It's true:  I'm bored to death, and I am absolutely loving it.  Our only appointments tomorrow are those simple verities of living near the ocean:  sunrise, sunset, and the tides that rise and fall between them.  And, oh, yes - a  good book for this evening.