73 Ibises

Highlands Roadrunner celebrated his 73^rd birthday on Wednesday by  – how else? – running four miles the first thing in the morning.  I included two intervals at the Picnic Area and returned on the beach, which is always a glorious way to end a run and celebrate a birthday.  For lunch, we went to the Beach Tavern & Grill, just down the road in Atlantic Beach and for some reason under our radar.  It was a 50-year-old Mom and Pop place – Mom was our waitress, Pop was cooking in the kitchen (today's special:  lasagna), and daughter (who  began working there at the age of 13) was at the bar.  It was very good, and we will return again.  For dinner, Martha treated me to a nice dinner of tapas at Circa 81, a restaurant we have enjoyed in the past but not been back to since Covid, and it too was very good.

My friend Skip was among the many friends and relatives, including my sister and daughter, who contacted me and wished me a Happy Birthday.  “Still not another age group yet,” he texted, and it was true, although as I replied to him “For an old guy like me it is often 70 and over.”  My octogenarian friend Fred ran such a race last year, but when the race director learned that he was 82 years old when he finished, he created a new age group on the spot of “80 and over.”

My celebration of another birthday, a loving wife and daughter and many friends, of life and health and fitness, was darkened the very next day when we learned that Russia was invading Ukraine.  We have been watching the news and it was not unexpected, but still it is a shock to see images of innocent Ukrainian civilians huddling in metro stations with their children and their pets, here in this cosmopolitan country in the 21^st century, the beautiful historic city of Kyiv being hit with ballistic missiles.  Surely this is as significant an event as Germany invading Poland in 1939.  There is no reasoning with a KGB thug like Putin, but it is at least encouraging to see our country taking the lead in organizing a world united (mostly) against such an unjust and evil act of war.

It is almost difficult to enjoy ourselves when we stop to think of the hardship that the Ukrainian people are enduring.  So we continue to run, to walk on the beach, and to try to stay fit.  Martha checked out a water aerobics class at a facility in Morehead City that, like the Beach Tavern, was under our radar.  I had been working out at the City’s Recreation Center pre-Covid, and before that at a place called Anytime Fitness.  This facility is simply called the Sports Center, and in addition to the water aerobics there are full-size indoor and outdoor swimming pools, basketball/pickleball courts, a large space for yoga and aerobics, and even two racquetball courts.  And most spectacularly of all, there is a huge gym with four large rooms for Nautilus-Cybex and free-weights – every imaginable kind of exercise equipment.  It finally seems safe to work out again in a gym, and we have both visited many times since discovering it the week before last, Martha enjoying the water aerobics and yoga and me exploring the weight rooms.

It’s what we do when we have another birthday:  strive for fitness and health.  As the poster that I have hanging in our house says, these birthdays are not for sissies.

It was another sunny but very windy day on Friday, so we went hiking at Fort Macon again, this time on the salt marsh portion of the Elliott Coues Nature Trail, which is more sheltered from the south wind.  We began on the Yarrow Loop, where we have been on bird hikes before, and immediately we saw a juvenile ibis, just like one that has been hanging out at the driveway to our condo.  The juvenile is brown, and as it matures it acquires patches of white before finally turning completely white.  My photo did not do the little fellow justice, but when we continued around the trail, we came upon this spectacular sight: a multitude of ibises roosting in the trees.  I did not count them but Martha said there were 73.

Martha continued on the trail toward the Picnic Area, where I later picked her up, but I was interested in seeing Fort Macon itself, something I had been meaning to do while we are here.  They installed this impressive World War II gun a couple of years ago, an original 155 millimeter caliber field gun that would have been used for defense in that war.  Despite its age, I couldn’t help thinking that our Ukrainian allies would be happy to have a few of these right now.

In fact, they might have been happy to have some of the civil-war era guns on display, as well.  That’s a 30-pound parrot rifle, top left, and a six-pounder field cannon below that.  And on the top right is a ten-inch siege mortar, and below that one of several big cannons mounted on the top of the fort, pointing out toward Beaufort inlet.  These are 10-inch columbiads, which could hurl their 128-pound cannon balls up to 3.2 miles away, and they were extremely accurate.

And so it goes.  Endless, senseless wars.  1862.  1939.  2022.  Will we ever see the end of them? 

Cemeteries

It may seem morbid to some, but I have always thought that cemeteries are some of the most beautiful places.  Memorial Park in Highlands comes to mind, with its gentle grassy slope and its views off to the west.  Even though loved ones are buried there, it is a peaceful and lovely place.  I have even written two or three poems set in that cemetery.

Across the expanse of marble-marked grass
Morning birds were singing in the distant trees.

Atlantic Beach is a short distance from Beaufort, where my great aunt lived before moving to a retirement home in Florida.  She was my father’s sister, whom we always called Aunt Marion, and I vaguely remember visiting her there well over 50 years ago.  I think she even took us to the famous Sanitary Fish Market and Restaurant.  I had always wondered where she lived, and Martha, who is able to find things on the computer that are difficult for most of us, discovered that she had lived on Ann Street.  We found the tiny frame house easily enough but it did not ring any bells in my memory.  Then Martha found that she was buried not far away, in Ocean View Cemetery.  It took us three visits, including a final stop at the Beaufort Town Hall to consult a map produced by a helpful woman named Lorraine, before we found where she and her husband George were buried.  And what a surprise!  Next to her plot was the grave of Edward Strembel, her brother whom we called Uncle Ed, and whom I have an even vaguer memory of visiting when I was perhaps ten years old when he lived in Valley Stream, Long Island.

It was a very nice cemetery, and while trying to find Aunt Marion’s headstone, we saw simple headstones and elaborately carved ones, as well as all of those curious things that people place on graves.  There was a statue of a little dog, and one of the headstones had a very clear portrait etched into it of a beautiful young woman.

But I think my favorite cemetery is the Old Burying Ground, deeded to the Town of Beaufort but dating to 1709, which I visited last Wednesday.  We had been to the N. C. Maritime Museum to hear an interesting lecture about the Menhaden Industry here.  As with many of their presentations, it was very detailed, but I can say that we can now regale anyone we meet with stories about this tiny fish that was harvested not for food but for its oil and its qualities as a fertilizer.

The Old Burying Ground contains graves dating to the Civil War and even to the Revolutionary War, and the Historical Society gives tours and distributes an interesting brochure about those who are buried there.  We have visited before and I wrote a long poem about it which I may publish some day.  On Wednesday, I found the gates locked, though, and went to the Historical Society’s Visitor Center to ask about it.  “Oh, that happens all the time!” a volunteer told me.  “Let me get the police to go by and unlock it.”  I hadn’t thought it would require a 9-1-1 call for me to gain access, but when I returned a while later the gates were wide open.

Little Virginia Dill’s grave is near the front gate, and her stone has a sleeping child on its top.  She died of yellow fever and was buried in a glass-top casket, for some reason.  The story goes that the grave was dug up by vandals and the body in the casket was intact, but as soon as they opened it the body disintegrated.

 
An unnamed British naval officer is buried toward the back.  He died on board ship in Beaufort harbor, and not wanting to be “buried with his boots off,” he was buried standing up in full uniform.

There are many such stories buried in this shady place under live oak trees and wisteria vines.  Sarah Gibbs was married to the seaman Jacob Shepard, who disappeared on his ship and was presumed dead.  After a time, she married Nathaniel Gibbs and had a child with him, but after an absence of several years Jacob returned to find Sarah married to another man.  The two men agreed that Sarah would remain with Gibbs as long as she lived, but must spend eternity at Jacob’s side, which is where she is buried.

Not far from the British Soldier is a grave containing sailors who froze to death when the Crissie Wright was wrecked in January of 1886.  It is marked by only three or four bricks.  “Cold as the night the Crissie Wright went ashore,” is a phrase still used around this part of the coast.

One of the most “popular” graves is the Girl in a Barrel of Rum.  An English family in the 1700s moved to Beaufort with an infant daughter, and when she grew up she wanted to see her homeland, finally persuading her father to take her.  His mother made him promise that he would return the girl safely, but she died on the voyage back to Beaufort.  Her father could not bear the idea of a burial at sea, and so he kept his promise by buying a barrel of rum from the captain and placing her in it for burial.  The grave is always covered with flowers, stuffed animals, beads, seashells, and other tokens of affection.  But according to one account, the story doesn’t end there.  “There are those who say that the figure of a young girl can be seen running and playing between the graves in the Old Burying Grounds at night.  They say that the tributes left on the young girl’s grave are often moved about the graveyard at night, often found sitting balanced on top of other gravestones or in places they couldn’t have moved to by just the wind.”

(Time for some spooky music to play in the background.)  It is a spooky place.  But a very beautiful place.  As are all cemeteries.

Valentine's Day

We are finally experiencing some of that nice mid- to late-February weather that we have enjoyed here in past years.  The days are longer and the temperatures are warming up just a little more everyday, although that north wind still howls some days.  It will seem warm and toasty out on our south-facing deck, and sometimes I can even sit out there shirtless after a run, but going down the stairs on the other side of the building to the car parked below seems like another season entirely as that wind bites sharply.

It was a nice day on Friday, so we decided to drive to the Bath House area for a picnic and then take a hike to Fort Macon, around four miles in all.  I am steadily recovering from my fall of two weeks ago – Thursday I completed four miles, and Saturday six – and this easy four-mile hike seemed like a good way to continue to loosen up and heal those bruised muscles.  We hiked on that part of the Elliot Coues Nature trail that winds around and over the sand dunes on the ocean side, a trail that returns to the same parking lot on the sound side through a maritime forest overlooking salt marshes.  This trail is my favorite, though, climbing up gentle hills on mulch that is stable enough that you can run on it (and we two runners as well as many hikers with dogs), and offering views over the ocean to the south.  An additional benefit is that every year, Christmas trees (see post of January 12) are deposited at Fort Macon and conveyed onto these sand dunes to help stabilize them.  The lovely fragrance of Frazier Fir trees is all along the trail.

The trail drops down under cedar trees from time to time, and it was almost chilly in the shade.  We saw this unusual sight on the side of the trail – someone had written “STUMP” with an indelible marker where a cedar had been neatly trimmed.  We puzzled over it for awhile - there are always mysteries encountered even on the most ordinary of hikes, if one is attentive - and then speculated that it might have been the remnants of a scavenger hunt that the employees at Friendly Market went on earlier in the week; every year, they close for a day-long “team-building” exercise, which they all thoroughly enjoy.

The trail climbs to its highest point close to the Fort, where there are the ruins of a WWII bunker just below; big chunks of concrete are all that remain to be seen.

From this overlook you have a 360-degree panoramic view of the coast – south toward the condo and Atlantic Beach, then around to the sound-side and the harbor and Coast Guard Station, and finally back around from the Fort to the south again.  It was clear enough to see Shackleford Banks and Cape Lookout with its iconic diamond-pattern lighthouse.  I took this video from there:

We continued on to the Fort, and then went out onto the beach and followed it back to the Bath House.  It was low tide and there were many other hikers and shell-gatherers out, enjoying the day as we were.  We stopped at the rock jetty and took these photos. 

We had nearly returned to the condo when sharp-eyed Martha pointed out to the ocean, and we saw a group of dolphins leaping into the air.  My photos of dolphins never turn out very good, but you can see three of them here, swimming in tandem, in an oceanic synchronized swimming event.

And so the days continue, sunrises greeting us and glorious sunsets bidding farewell.  There is always a light show in the west, except on rainy days, even if only a faint purple-red glow between the houses in the adjoining subdivision, and it often lasts for a very long time.  I know this is a common sight for beach-dwellers, but we live in a mountain valley where we never see the actual sunrise or sunset from our house.

As I write this, it is Valentine’s Day, an American romantic holiday that we gladly and unquestioningly celebrate each year.  There are roses and cards, and we say once again how much we love each other – there should be more holidays like this!  And tonight we are looking forward to a special dinner at Amos Mosquito’s, a restaurant that only takes reservations on two days every year, New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, and which Martha had the foresight to arrange long ago.  Omicron is on the decline, and we will be in the roomy “back porch” room overlooking the salt marshes, and also the first seating of the evening.  So we have decided not to worry about it, and to simply enjoy a celebratory meal, which if my arithmetic is correct will be our 45^th Valentine’s Day together.  How fortunate I was to find (as said in the card I gave her) this Partner, this Love, this Friend. 

Kitesurfing

In my last post I described falling last Monday, which I initially considered to be a minor setback.  I ran three miles on Wednesday, and on Thursday and Friday I walked on the beach without noticing anything wrong other than the surface abrasion on my knee.  We had already decided not to run the race on Saturday morning, mostly because a third of the course was on sidewalks similar to the one I had fallen on.  Returning from the store on Saturday afternoon, however, and carrying a rather heavy bag of groceries up the steps to the condo, I felt a sharp pain and almost stumbled and fell again.  While the surface injury was healing nicely, the bruised muscles in my hip were still not back to normal. 

Fortunately I was much improved by Sunday and even more so by Monday, when I consulted a chiropractor.  He was an athletic type, a former runner, and we connected immediately.  He was able to nudge my aging bones back into alignment and offer some good recovery advice, and so this morning I was able to walk/run two miles.  I have been here before – recovering from one injury or another – and I know it just takes time and patience, my only goal now to be able to return to the six- and seven-mile runs of last month, and more than that if I can.  If today’s outing was any indication, I am heading in the right direction.

Meanwhile, the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets continue unabated, despite the minor stumbles, the aches and pains and setbacks of mere mortals like ourselves.

Friday, we walked to the pier and back on a windy and blustery afternoon, and this young man was out on the ocean exuberantly kitesurfing and thoroughly enjoying himself.  I posted the video on Facebook, and Martha was quick to add the comment, “Contrary to what you might be thinking, this is NOT Richard Betz!”  My sister had already commented, “I was wondering . . . LOL!”  LOL indeed!  The man who trips on cracks in a sidewalk would never attempt such an athletic feat.

We have both been reading more than we do in Highlands, although Martha always seems to be completing books twice as fast as I, and I have been working on some poetry and a new piece of music for the keyboard.  We have been working the crossword puzzles in The New Yorker regularly, too, and now we have discovered a new daily word game called Wordle, which is being played by millions of people around the world, including many of our Facebook friends.  It is somehow very satisfying to work the puzzle out each morning and share the number of steps it took to complete with other friends.  It took six steps for me this morning, my worst performance to date.

And so it goes.  The tides rise and fall, the wind swings around from north to south, the moon waxes and wanes – the joy of living out here on the edge of a continent where the elemental forces of nature are so immense and beautiful, and where we are mere kitesurfers on the surface of it all.

Groundhog Day

I vividly remember the last time I took a fall while running, if not the exact date then the circumstances.  I was training for a marathon, so it must have been 15 or 20 years ago, and I was just wrapping up a 20-mile long run, when my toe caught on something in the sidewalk just north of Town Hall and I came down hard.  (I later tried to determine what had tripped me but found only the usual cracks in a sidewalk and its minor changes in elevation.)  What did I do?  I was close to my car, so I went there to find and apply a band-aid to staunch the flow of blood from my knee, took off my glasses (one lens had been cracked and knocked out of the frame), and (of course) continued to finish my all-important long run. 

I later found that in addition to the glasses,  I had cracked a front tooth, requiring a bridge to repair it, and had so badly sprained a hand that Martha insisted on taking me to the Emergency Room to verify that it had not been broken.  The glasses were variable-tint that would turn dark in the sunlight, and I inadvertently replaced the lens with ordinary glass, so that in photos from that time I looked like a pirate.

So I conclude that I am destined to fall every 15 or 20 years, which in the scheme of things if not too bad.  And that’s what I did on Monday when I was finishing up a mere four-mile run, although one which had included two intervals and a series of hill repeats (in the only subdivision nearby that has hills).  It was on a sidewalk again, not ten yards from the entrance to our condo, and I was tired.  But like the last time, I got up and finished out the four miles, then later went back and tried to find the offending crack, to no avail.  This mishap was far less expensive than the previous one – an abrasion on one knee which did not deter me from running two days later and a sore butt.  I was grateful that it was not worse – I could have broken a hip, as my friend Fred did last fall while playing pickleball, or worse.

My training has been going well for a 5-K race – the Cocoa 5-K – coming  up on Saturday, and my main concern was how much of a setback it would be.  But today’s three-mile easy run went well, and I deliberately ran the first mile on the same sidewalk without any mishaps.  We have run this race before, and the first and last half-mile are on sidewalks, so we will have to be alert and nimble-footed, not always easy to do at the end of a race or in its crowded start (where I have witnessed many runners falling).  We are ambivalent about the race anyway, and may give it a miss if the rain forecast for Saturday morning amounts to much.  It is a small race which is part of the annual Carolina Chocolate Festival, featuring such events as a chocolate-pudding-eating contest and many, many different chocolate confections.  The race seems to be a kind of afterthought, and the official trade-marked logo on the shirt is always a cartoon chocolate bar with a bite taken out of one corner.

We would have to set the alarm for 5:00 a.m., too, which we have done many times for more important races.  “Why is it so early?” we wondered.  Then Martha realized that it was to get the race over with and the parking spaces emptied out before the ravenous chocolate-lovers begin showing up.

It is warming up nicely this week, yet the beach remains nearly deserted most of the time.  Martha walked to the pier and back yesterday and returned with a handful of sea stars – there was little competition from other shell-gatherers.

 

Today was Groundhog Day in America, and I watched the ceremonies surrounding the appearance of Phil in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania this morning.  Like the Chocolate Festival, Phil seems to play a less important part in the day’s festivities than the music and the food.  And those people in the crowd - could they be drinking so early?

There were top hats and proclamations, and everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely, even when it was announced that Phil had communicated that there will be six more weeks of winter.  They claim that his prediction is 40% accurate each year, so the odds are (slightly) that the warming temperatures this week and the increased sunlight each day will prove him wrong. And this morning, in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, it was foggy.