The Annual Struggle

We have returned to Highlands in mid-March, just in time to witness the annual struggle between Winter and Spring, one not wanting to let go just yet and the other insisting that it is time.  Yesterday afternoon the temperature went up to 70 degrees, and everywhere we looked we saw flowering trees and greening grass.  Our hyacinths and daffodils, like old friends, were waiting to greet us along the walk.

Down the road just a bit, the wall of forsythia in front of our neighbor's garden was already profuse, although with less sunshine ours is still a little spindly.

After cleaning the table, we ate lunch out on our deck.  And then it was so nice that we ate dinner there, too, although Spring showers threatened to chase us indoors.

It was also nice to meet friends at the Park yesterday morning for a group run - Karen and Fred, and later Vicki and Art.  We have had the opportunity to run more in Atlantic Beach than we would have here in Highlands this winter, but they have been solo runs, and I have missed the camaraderie of running with friends.  Running has been a struggle, though, partly because of the 500-mile drive home and partly because of the change in altitude, from pretty close to zero feet on those glorious mornings when I could play tag with the incoming surf running on the beach, to 3850 feet on Main Street.  I managed only five miles yesterday, and as I told Martha when I returned home it felt like ten.  But I have been in this place before in my life as a runner, know that I will soon become acclimated to the altitude, and before long will be running up Big Bearpen again.

I am looking at the weather forecast for the week now and I see to my disappointment that this balmy time will come to an end in a few days; the temperature on Thursday morning is predicted to be 22 degrees.  I remember seeing it snow many times in April, after all, and on one memorable occasion on May 6.  But fortunately those snows do not last long, and there is something especially lovely about snow clinging to daffodils.

There is plenty to do this time of year in our yard.  I picked up most of the branches that blew down over the past four months, and on Friday I unstopped the culvert under out neighbor's driveway which in a torrential rain on Friday briefly turned our front yard into a muddy river.  There are apple trees to prune, and compost to take to the gardens, and then gardens to be tilled and planted.  All of this is the kind of work I look forward to, that good satisfying work that makes one sleep well at the end of the day.  

But 22 degrees on Thursday!  Perhaps I will take that day off from yard work.  It won't be long before we will be hearing the peepers down the road, the crocuses will be struggling free from the earth, and insistent Spring will have won the struggle.

I made a covenant with Spring
It was Ordinary Time, and the crocuses were up;
The morning sun lapped at the edge of the pond.
And the birds sang every morning.  I gave them
Literary names:  Cheever Cheever Cheever.

We decided on this Palm Sunday morning that we should not work at all, but instead should take a drive down to South Carolina for a surprise visit with Martha's aunt Anne.  It is not easy to surprise her, but we did, the first time we have seen her in something like 15 months.  We have talked from time to time on the phone, but it was so nice to see her face to face!  Everywhere we look, things are getting better: restaurants are opening, events are being planned, and nearly everybody we know has already been vaccinated.  There is a lot to look forward to as the long struggle with Winter - and with the pandemic - seems to be coming to an end.

On the Horizon

There is always something new on the horizon.  Yesterday morning when I looked out the balcony, this unusual structure was in place, directly in front of the condo, appearing to be floating in the air.  I had not seen it before then and wondered if it had arrived overnight.

Martha, who is a regular follower of “Friends of Atlantic Beach” on Facebook, learned that it was the Bravos, an offshore barracks and supply vessel supporting the dredging and beach nourishment, which has now almost come to an end.  “You can see the body is suspended off the water by spuds to keep it steady,” the helpful Facebook friend added. 

I wondered if the Brazos was occupied or not – he had used the word “barracks” – and if so, if those “spuds” helped to keep it from blowing away or capsizing.  The wind has risen to nearly 30 miles per hour and is expected to remain that strong for the next three days, and the ocean is a wild sight, churning white with foam leaping into the air.  We were hoping to complete one or two nice runs on the beach before we left here next week, but now it doesn’t seem like that will happen, even for those of us officially diagnosed with NRITH syndrome (Not Right in the Head). 

While the Brazos is on one horizon, we can feel the pull of Home on the other horizon.  We have stayed here longer than in any previous year, thanks to the generosity of Martha’s Aunt Lizette.  But we have found ourselves discussing home more and more, making plans for planting the garden, pruning the apple trees, seeing friends and brothers and sisters – all of the elements of our life in Highlands that we enjoy so much.  And with our second Covid shot behind us, we are looking forward to brightening expectations. 

We have had a good Sabbatical.  That tall stack of  books that we brought with us to read, posted in this blog way back in December, has disappeared, and we have read many more besides those.  

I have gotten some good writing done and managed to learn some new music on the keyboard we brought with us.  Martha has enjoyed preparing seafood and has learned some new recipes.  And we have both enjoyed so many good runs and hikes that they cannot be counted.  Although the wind continues to howl as I write what may be my last post before we return to Highlands, we will carry with us wonderful memories of this place and time.

The Music of What Happens

Martha was using a bookmark the other day that I had never noticed before.

Birds are plentiful in Atlantic Beach – we have gone on bird walks at Fort Macon in past years with Park Superintendent Randy Newman – and we have learned to identify some of them.  Now that Spring is just around the corner, the air is alive with their songs.  That mockingbird is still here with his magical mimicking music; I often see him along the walkway to the dune-top deck early in the morning perched on the top-most branch of a red cedar.  Some birds are nesting in the shrubs directly below our balcony, too, and they often swoop up to stand near the railing.  Their droppings were becoming a nuisance, so Martha taped a piece of aluminum foil there to deter them, which has been mostly successful.  But sometimes one will land defiantly on the center of the foil and strut back and forth, as this mourning dove did earlier today.

They love to perch on the roof ridges of the nearby houses, too, sometimes congregating in large numbers, and then moving in unison to another roof.  They are so close together that it is amazing they do not collide.  But I suppose they might think the same thing about a runner in a marathon, packed in with thousands of other runners. 

Sometimes I go out on the balcony with my coffee in the morning and simply watch them at play.  It is mating season and they do seem to be at play; sometimes a pair can be seen chasing one another like children playing a game of tag.  All of this reminds me of a poem by Seamus Heaney that I came upon the other day.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

That’s what the legendary hero Fionn mac Cumhaill is said to have replied when he was asked what was the best music of all:  “The music of what happens.”

We will be leaving Atlantic Beach in a week or two, and so we are trying to savor every moment, walking on the beach nearly every day, running, trying to keep that green bough in our heart, and listening to that best music of all, the music of what happens.  This morning was overcast, but when I went out onto the deck I could see a bright band of gauzy pink all along the horizon on the east. 

We will feel better about traveling because as of yesterday morning we received our second Covid vaccine.  And it is good to know that we are among the increasing number of Americans that have now been vaccinated, over 100 million as of yesterday, 13% of the population.  It is possible that we might be returning to a summer of backyard cookouts with friends and families by the Fourth of July, as our President talked about in his speech on Thursday night.  That would be very welcome music to our ears!

Oriental Journey

Yesterday we decided to take an Oriental journey – that is, to Oriental, a small Town in Pamlico County on the banks of the Neuse River that we have visited in past years while staying in Atlantic Beach.  It is an old Town, once haunted by Blackbeard the Pirate, and now definitely a fishing-centric place, with the Oriental Harbor Marina filled with pleasure and commercial boats.  It’s an hour and twenty minutes away by driving to New Bern and then east and south.  But in the same time, you can drive pleasant two-lane roads through flat countryside and take the 15-minute ferry across the Neuse River (at a much narrower point) from Cherry Branch to Minnesott Beach, and then on to Oriental. 

The N.C. Ferry system is an especially fine, underrated operation by the State of North Carolina.  It costs absolutely nothing, and the ferry terminals and the ferry itself (which leaves every 30 minutes) were spotless.  It was a smooth crossing on this balmy day.

It’s a short drive to Oriental from the ferry terminal.  The Town was named, I learned, from the sailing steamer Oriental, built in Philadelphia in 1861 and used as a Federal transport ship in the Civil War.  She was wrecked only a year later off Bodie Island, 33 miles north of Cape Hatteras, but a porthole from the ship is on display in the Oriental History Museum, closed every time we have visited, alas. 

Our first stop was The Silos, a great little dive of a restaurant that is literally located in a silo and is known for its good pizza.

The Silos was open for indoor dining at 50% capacity, but we chose to order a pizza to go and found a quiet place around the back called the Red Rooster, which during the summer is the go-to place in Oriental to listen to live music.  We were the only ones there today and there was no live music, but we enjoyed eating our Greek Pizza on a table next to a decrepit but authentic-looking covered seating area.

After lunch, Martha shopped a little in a place she likes on Broad Street called Nautical Wheelers, while I sat outside on the porch, finding the directions to Lou Mac Park on my phone.  We visited the Park after that and found the famous "Dancing Chairs," a set of white Adirondack chairs that are usually placed at the water's edge.  Local legend has it that the chairs dance all night when there's a full moon, and settle down before the sun comes up, but always in a different location within the park's grounds.  We shall have to return here someday when there is a full moon and test the veracity of this legend!

The journey back across the Neuse River was as smooth a crossing as the journey this morning.  Taking a ferry always reminds me of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, which ends with Siddhartha apprenticing with the ferryman Vasudeva:

Often, they sat in the evening together by the bank on the log, said nothing and both listened to the water, which was no water to them, but the voice of life, the voice of what exists, of what is eternally taking shape.

Being a ferryman is an honorable profession, I realized, as our ferryman gently nudged our ferry into the dock at Cherry Branch.  “Thank you,” I said, as we rolled up onto solid ground.

Painted Rocks and Paper Cranes

It turned much colder overnight, 34 degrees out on the dune-top deck this morning, where I did my Tai Chi to the accompaniment of that ebullient mockingbird that has taken up residence somewhere nearby.  I checked the forecast for the week and it looked absolutely wonderful.  

It being a perfect, cloudless sunny day, we decided again to drive to Fort Macon and hike the entire 3.3-mile loop of the Elliott Coues Nature Trail.  The parking lot was full and there were more people out on the trail than we have ever seen before, all of them having made the same decision we had.  Martha spotted this rock adjacent to the path that runs along the salt marshes, just on the other side of a wooden walkway.

She knew something about painted rocks but I did not.  I did some research and learned that they are a kind of nationwide scavenger hunt meant to promote positivity and kindness.  Smooth rocks of different sizes are painted, sometimes with faces or looking like ladybugs, often with inspirational words written on them.  Local communities are often involved, and there is a presence on social media.  There is an “NC Painted Rocks” Facebook page, for example.  What do you do when you find a painted rock?  If it is a small one, you can put it in your pocket and take it home.  This rock was about eight inches wide and would not have been easy to carry along this path, at least a half-mile in either direction.  So I left it where it was, wondering what the abstract picture was meant to represent.

When we returned to the condo, I set to work on a new skill that I have stumbled into – making paper origami cranes.  I can’t remember exactly where I first read about paper cranes recently, but the idea stuck in my head.  I learned there is an ancient Japanese legend that promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes (千羽鶴, senbazuru; literally “1000 cranes”) will be granted a wish by the gods.  The legend was popularized in a book called Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the story of a Japanese girl who was two years old when she was exposed to radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II.  The girl soon developed leukemia at the age of 12 and began making origami cranes with the goal of making one thousand.  Tragically, it is said that she folded only 644 before she became too weak to fold any more, and died in 1955.

I have been writing some poetry on our Sabbatical, and one of them is about paper cranes, and begins like this:

 I made a thousand paper cranes
From the silence within me,
And released them one by one. 

Since I was already so deeply invested in paper cranes, I decided I should learn to make one, which was more difficult than it looked.  After referring to a You Tube video several times, I was finally able to memorize the steps, folding and refolding, and folding again.

It was a little like memorizing a new piece of music, something I am also doing these days, the steps finally committed to memory.  I remember my piano-teacher Dad telling me, Practice Makes Perfect.  I practiced enough that I can make a paper crane out of any piece of square paper.  But in the process, I went through several sheets of print paper.

March is the Month of Expectation

It was my turn to write on the blackboard, so I posted the first line of Emily’s Dickinson’s poem:

March is the Month of Expectation.
The things we do not know—
The Persons of prognostication
Are coming now—
We try to show becoming firmness—
But pompous Joy
Betrays us, as his first Betrothal
Betrays a Boy.

It’s true, as Emily says, that there are the things we do not know.  But we can still expect that this month, and this summer, promises to be better than last year, for many reasons.

First and foremost, it appears that the coronavirus pandemic may soon be under control.  Our new President announced this week that he expected all American adults could be vaccinated by the end of May.  When we first arrived here in mid-November, I posted this in my blog:

The latest graph is much more optimistic, showing a dramatic decline.

The roll-out of the vaccine continues to be very impressive.  More than 82 million doses have been administered, reaching 16.3% of the total U.S. population.  We are now administering over 2 million shots a day.  Martha and I will be getting our second shot exactly a week from now, and along with many of our friends will be thankful to receive it.  Among the many conspiracy theories circulating on the internet is the notion that the vaccine is injecting a microchip in our bodies, courtesy of Bill Gates.  But I subscribe to Science, not to microchips and space lasers and lizard people.  And even if that were the case, I am guessing the chip would crash or need to be updated before long.

More good news:  the Covid Relief Bill which has been passed by the House and will soon by passed by the Senate has a wide range of features that will help those who are suffering – and suffering so much more than we are – including stimulus checks, aid for small businesses, extension of unemployment benefits, and more funding for vaccines.

Just this morning I learned of more good news.  Face masks, hand cleaning, and social distancing intended to combat Covid has also helped dramatically reduce influenza this winter. 

A single pediatric death!  That is nothing short of miraculous.

We will be returning to Highlands in only two or three weeks, and have enjoyed our Sabbatical in Atlantic Beach, where we have avoided the worst of the winter weather and been able to run, hike, and be out of doors most days.  As in past years, we hope to carry forward into the coming year the good habits we cultivated here – reading more, writing, eating healthy, and finding balance in our lives.  I cannot say often enough:  It is so generous of Martha’s Aunt Lizette to let us stay here!  From newspaper reports, it appears that some of our favorite events will resume in Highlands when we return, including the re-scheduled Twilight 5-K in May, the Highlands Motoring Festival, weekly Farmer’s Market, Craft Show, and summer concert series.  Face masks and social distancing will still be in effect, no doubt, but it will be a step toward some kind of “normalcy” once again.

It is March now and we are experiencing that typical see-saw weather that we also see in Highlands, one day dawning warm and sunny, and then winter returning the next day.  Yesterday was one of the former, and I was able to complete a six-mile run to Fort Macon, the first time I have done that in a couple of weeks, and dressed in my lightest running clothes.  By this morning the temperature had fallen and the north wind had risen.  For some reason, I awoke at 5:30, and found myself out on the dune-top deck with a cup of coffee an hour later to watch another  beautiful sunrise.

It was warm enough on our balcony this afternoon, in full sunlight and sheltered from the north wind, to eat lunch.  I had gone out earlier and found that our mockingbird, which returned a few weeks ago, was in full song, going through his entire repertoire again and again.  He kept moving from rooftop to rooftop, as if he were testing the acoustics in a concert hall.  For readers of this blog who can play a video I recorded this.

What a musician!  He is the very embodiment of Emily Dickinson’s “pompous joy!”