Gratitude

We have visited Beaufort three times since we arrived.  It is one of our favorite little towns and is only a short 20-minute drive.  I usually take the same photos:  the vintage-looking sign on the side of a building on Turner Street, the marina on Taylor’s Creek where there are always some beautiful boats quietly anchored, and the Old  Burying Ground, ca. 1731, where you can find graves dating back to both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

Our first visit to Beaufort this year was nine days ago, when we attended a lecture at the N. C. Maritime Museum, a wonderful little museum containing artifacts from the 18^th century ship Queen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of Edward Teach - better known by his nickname Blackbeard.  Also on display, suspended high above the other exhibits, is the skeleton of Echo, a 33-foot sperm whale that came ashore on Cape Lookout in 2004, as well as its preserved heart - a unique experience, touching a whale's heart!  The lecture was a sad story, based on his diaries,  about an unlucky farmer who lived just after the Civil War and attempted to eke out a living farming not far from Beaufort, but was not very successful at the endeavor. 

We had lunch afterward and spent some time walking around Beaufort, and that’s when I found myself once again visiting the Old Burying Ground a couple of blocks away on Ann Street.  It is a beautiful place, quiet and shady beneath huge live oak trees, and among the graves are that of a British soldier from the 1700s buried standing up (at attention for his King) and the mass grave of several victims of the shipwreck of the Crissie Wright in 1886, still remembered in the local expression, “cold as the night the Crissie Wright came ashore,” when they say Bogue Sound froze over solid.

A poem I wrote two years ago, when we had an ice-storm here in January, was inspired by the story and was a semi-finalist in the James Applewhite Poetry Competition.

 The Crissie Wright

An ice storm at this beach is as rare
As snow on daffodils:  a sudden stroke,
The spikes of the yuccas sheathed,
Fixed in scabbards of clear ice,
The heavy pampas grass bowing low,
The red cedars bright with ice-knots.

Rain overnight stopped in its tracks
With a shudder, like that night in 1886 –
Single digits, so cold that Bogue Sound
Froze over in deadlocked denial –
The night the Crissie Wright came ashore,
All hands lost save one, a ship’s cook.

And why did he alone deserve to live?
Trembling in his bright icy salvation
While his shipmates, one by one, were
Lowered into a common grave in the
Old Burying Ground under the live oaks,
Slipping and sliding on frozen ground.

This lowly cook from below deck –
Could he ever forget the dazzling ice
Clinging to broken spars, dangling rigging,
Or those swept overboard and lost forever
In the cold waters just off Beaufort?
Could he ever stop shivering?

A local favorite is the grave of the girl buried in a barrel of rum.  The young girl begged her parents to travel with her father to London, and her mother gave her permission only on condition that her daughter would be returned to their home in Beaufort.  Alas, she died on the voyage, and rather than commit her body to a burial at sea, he persuaded the captain to put her body in a barrel of rum and returned to Beaufort for burial.  Visitors to this day leave stuffed animals and other toys as gifts on her grave in memory for her and for good luck.  

As one especially spooky local account adds:

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.

I suppose every graveyard has a ghost or two, and the Old Burying Ground does seem especially spooky on a gray, overcast day.  I would not want to spend the night there.

The next night, we returned to Beaufort for another event we have attended for many years, the annual Clam Chowder Cook-off, a fund-raiser for the museum.  Four guest clam chowder cooks and four cornbread bakers compete in the event at the Watercraft Center, a ship-building workshop across from the museum.  As usual, the chowders were delicious, and once again the event was sold out.

This week, we attended another lecture at the museum, this time one of the more interesting ones we have ever heard presented by a man who was a knowledgeable and passionate expert on whales.  I learned more about whales than I had ever known before.  We were saddened to learn about whales that had been killed, and were washed up on area beaches, because they had ingested balloons and plastic buckets.  After the program, we had a delicious lunch two blocks away at the Beaufort Grocery Company, a place we had been meaning to try for lunch - we had attended wine tasting dinners there over the years but never lunch. 

And so our Sabbatical continues.  The pile of books we brought with us has grown after a visit to the Carteret County Library in Beaufort.  The weather has gotten warmer this week, and my own running has gone well, with interval training and increasing weekly mileage, and I think I am ready for the Cocoa 5-K next Saturday.  Martha has started back running, too, and both of us continue to practice Yoga, once a week for me and twice a week for Martha.  We have seen three movies and a play, and are going to New Bern tomorrow to see another play – The Color Purple.   And of course, there is seafood, local seafood like the perfect pan-seared scallops sourced from Blue Ocean seafood market that Martha prepared this week.

And there is always the continuous presence of the ocean, and the sunrise and the sunset, with their elemental power and beauty.  Yesterday morning during Tai Chi I took a time lapse of the glorious sunrise breaking free from morning clouds and ascending into the sky to the east.  At the same time, the full moon was setting to the west, and high tide was roaring in front of me to the south.   

Our Yoga teacher Ann-Marie talked to us today in her practice not only about Sun Salutations (which I knew about) but also Moon Salutations and Sea Salutations.  I felt that I had saluted all three through my Tai Chi yesterday.  She also talked to us about gratitude, and that is the single word I wrote on our kitchen whiteboard when we returned.

Gratitude.  Life is good!

Instructions for Living a Life

Martha wrote this quote from Mary Oliver on the whiteboard this week.  Instructions for living a life:  Pay attention.  Be astonished.  Tell about it.  That’s good advice, and especially for a poet and a blogger.

I’m not sure anyone reads this blog anymore except my faithful proofreader Martha, but I am continuing to tell about it.  Before Martha’s aunt Lizette died in 2021, she graciously offered us the use of her condo here in Atlantic Beach during the winter, and in return I told her about it through my blog on an almost daily basis.  I even printed out a copy and mailed it to her periodically, using the local print shop here and then a printer that we bought.  She especially enjoyed hearing about the places she had told us about and urged us to visit, like Harkers Island, Fort Macon, and the Methodist Church in Morehead City.  And the many things that astonished us!

These days I write this blog mostly for my own amusement and to record memories that I can refer to.  I have looked back on the races that we completed here, for example, to remember not only our finish times but our impressions and the hardships we endured, like running in 35-mph wind during the Crystal Coast 10-K and Half Marathon in 2021:  Martha and I ran this half marathon and 10-K on a chilly and very windy morning, crossing the bridge from Morehead City to Atlantic Beach and then back again.  The sustained wind speed was 30 mph, with gusts up to 40 mph, the toughest winds I have faced in nearly 200 races; at one point, crossing the bridge directly into the headwind, it felt like someone was standing in front of me with a hand pushing on my chest.

I still feel an obligation to record not just training runs, as I did in the previous post, but the interesting activities we find while we are here.  Not only do we continue to run and to hike in these warmer winter temperatures, but we have also taken an interest in the rich local history and heritage, and have enjoyed programs at Fort Macon, the N. C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort, and the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.  There is theater and music, too, and every year we discover new cultural delights.

Of course, there is always the beach, the ocean singing its ancient song every night, the glorious sunrises and sunsets and Tai Chi on the dune-top deck, changing from day to day and tide to tide.

There is a dredging/beach restoration project taking place again this year as there was three years ago.  It is a big operation, removing sand from the harbor and pumping it onto the beach (see posts in January 2021), miles of pipe stretched out on the beach to just this side of the Fort Macon Picnic Area.

Apparently, the dredging has improved the shelling on some days, while on other days there are no shells at all, pursuant to a mysterious schedule that only the ocean knows.  While I was running on Friday, Martha walked on the beach and returned with a treasure trove, including several beautiful royal sea stars, olives, and a shark’s eye.  The only time I can recall such a successful shelling expedition was 2021 when dredging was once again taking place.

Saturday morning, we attended out first “Bend and Brew” class at Crystal Coast Brewing (see post of January 6), led by an interesting instructor, Ann-Marie, who brought with her a small hand-pumped keyboard instrument with which I was unfamiliar called a harmonium.  She said it was an Indian instrument, and I read about it a little on the internet.

Toward the end of the class, as we lay on our mats in savasana, she played the little instrument in a way that seemed to synchronous with our slow, deep breathing, and she sang a Hindu prayer.  She had a lovely voice and it was quite beautiful.  It was a good class and we met some interesting people as we stood around visiting afterward, sipping a very good Crystal Coast Brewing IPA.

Sunday morning, we missed our usual attendance at the First United Methodist Church in Morehead City, which Lizette had told us about the first year we came her in 2016.  Instead, we drove to the East Carteret High School for a performance of Mary Poppins Jr. by the Carteret Community Theater.  We have enjoyed many plays and events at CCT over the years, including one memorable Delbert McClinton concert on the night before that tough race I wrote about.  I think we were the only sober fans in attendance.  The CCT’s theater in Morehead City was badly damaged by Hurricane Florence in 2018 and they are still raising money to restore it, meanwhile staging performances in other venues like this one, which proved to be a large auditorium with a full stage.  The performance, starring a very talented Avery Price as the famous nanny, included 48 local Carteret and Onslow County area children, and it was a joy to see such enthusiasm and genuine talent in these children.

We have attended some interesting programs at nearby Fort Macon over the years, including musket firing, nature hikes, and bird hikes.  Monday morning’s program was a Scavenger Hunt, and I realized I had time to complete a three-mile run before the program began by running to the Fort and pulling on pants and hiking boots when Martha arrived with the car.  The day was perfect for an outing at the Fort, and we were surprised as more and more people, including young children, began to arrive.

The size of the group, about 50, surprised our leader, too, Park Ranger Laura, who had an excellent manner with the young children, all of whom were clearly paying attention and being astonished as we walked around the Yarrow Loop and out onto the beach.  We spotted a night heron (my photo was not good) high in a tree over a small pond, and then several curiosities out on the beach, including a long whelk-casing, a spider crab, and a cannonball jellyfish. 

 

Martha was paying attention and drew my attention to one of Laura’s many tattoos, which read simply UNLESS.  Almost as provocative as WIDE AWAKE on the arm of a young woman in Asheville many years ago, which resulted in a poem that made it into the pages of the N. C. Literary Review.  Perhaps UNLESS will settle into my imagination and blossom forth into verse while we are.  Unless.  I can see a poem in which every line begins with that word.

Unless we pay attention, we fail to be astonished.

Unless the voluble ocean falls silent, we cannot sleep.

Unless the sea stars fall into the sea, they cannot wash up in the surf.

The day was not over.  Events Coordinator Martha had read about a wine tasting at the Hotel Alice in nearby Pine Knoll Shores on Sunday evening, not only an opportunity to sample good wine, but to explore a place we did not know.

We were surprised to find the Hoffman Bar & Bistro just off the lobby of the hotel filled up when we arrived, but a friendly manager named Amy welcomed us and found us chairs.  We recognized the young man pouring the wine, who was from Tryon Distributing and knew friends of ours in the same business, and he told us some interesting stories about each wine, which included a very nice sparking rosé and some rosés from Provence similar in style to those we had tasted in our trip to France in 2022.  One of the red wines was made from zinfandel grapes, which he said the founder of the California vineyard had started from a cutting from his father’s European vineyard; the only other things he brought with him to America was $500 in cash and a race horse. 

We asked the manager about the Hotel Alice and learned that it had previously been another hotel but had been reinvented and renamed (together with the bar and bistro) after Alice Green Hoffman, a unique young woman of style and means who happened to be the aunt of Eleanor Roosevelt.  Alice owned property in Paris and rode race horses, motorcycles, and airplanes, and she bought 2,000 acres in Bogue Banks in 1917 in the Pine Knoll Shores area.  Amy gave us a brochure “hot off the press” which we read with interest, and she told us there were two PKS historians at the far end of the bar.  One of them, Susan, came over and introduced herself and regaled us with stories about Alice and local history.

I wish I had known Alice - the Queen of Bogue Banks!  She needed no instructions on how to live a life.  I found some of the material Susan had told us about on-line, and her time-line makes for fascinating reading, needing only a biographer to tell the story of her 91-year life – a life well-lived!  I learned, for example, that at the age of 71 she rode an Indian motorcycle by herself from New York to Bogue Banks. 

These are the things we love to learn as we heed Mary Oliver’s advice.  It is not difficult to be astonished when we pay attention.

Shelter from the Storm

It has been a long time since we had the flu, and I had forgotten how nasty it is.  Even when most of the symptoms began to subside early last week, we still felt fatigue.  It hit Martha harder than me, and by Monday I felt like trying to run.  A 20 mph wind was blowing hard out of the west, but it was fatigue more than the wind that made me cut it short at a mere two miles. 

Tuesday, a winter storm sweeping across the country caused major flooding and damage throughout the southeast.  Highlands received seven inches of rain by some accounts.  US-64 between Highlands and Franklin was seriously damaged, and the DOT estimated the road will be closed for at least two weeks.  Going by photos posted on Facebook, it may be a lot longer than that!

We did not receive that much rain at the coast, but it was a potent storm and all day the rain and wind shook the sliding-glass doors and howled through the cracks around the doors.  We watched its rapid, inexorable advance on radar as the worst of it, with wind gusts up to 90 mph, moved overhead and finally out over the ocean, with lightning flashing and thunder rumbling.  The power did not even flicker, though, something we have noticed before out here where the power infrastructure is hardened to withstand hurricanes and there are no tall trees to come down.

We have a little blackboard here like the one in our kitchen (actually a whiteboard and a dry-erase pen), and I wrote, “Give thanks for shelter from the storm,” our first entry for 2024.

I felt restless, and that morning I visited our small, inadequate exercise room here at the condo – two elipticals, a treadmill, and no weights heavier than ten pounds – and did as many pushups as I could (five sets of 20).  Good old reliable pushups!  Then, in the afternoon, I did some “hall-walking,” up and down the open hallways, then up to the next floor and so on.  By Wednesday morning the storm had blown over and I was able to run again, but again only two miles.  At this point I was not sure if it was the fatigue caused by the flu or simply from being out of shape after few opportunities to run while we were traveling.

On Thursday, I felt recovered enough (and non-contagious) to visit the Sports Center in Morehead City for the first time, a place we discovered last year.  There are several rooms filled with free weights and machines, basketball and pickleball courts, an indoor swimming pool, rooms for aerobics and yoga, and even a racquetball court.  One of the reasons we come out here for the winter is exactly because we want to be able to run, work out, and practice yoga, and it was a good feeling to return to the condo with sore muscles.

This morning, I capped off the week with my longest run since we have been here, and that was equally rewarding.  It was a beautiful day, temperatures in the mid-50s and only a light breeze, so I was able to run all the way to Fort Macon and back.  It is one of our usual training runs, five miles down to the Fort and back on a wide bike lane and with little traffic.  We know the route well, from the Union Artillery Placement sign marking the place where guns were set up to fire on the Fort in 1862, and the site of the wreckage off-shore of the notorious Blackbeard's ship, Queen Anne's Revenge.  A lap or two around the parking lot, or turning into the Picnic Area half-way there, can lengthen the route into a six- or seven-mile run, and if the tide is out you can run all or most the way back on the beach.  It was a modest beginning for a running program, which I hope will eventually include “intervals” at the Picnic Area.  And it was again very satisfying to feel good, healthy fatigue in the legs, to realize that I am making progress.  To be able to keep moving forward.

Siempre adelante, nunca atras:  the motto of a runner nearing his 75th year.

Bend and Brew

Bend and Brew is a weekly yoga class on Saturday mornings at Crystal Coast Brewing.  The brewery opens its doors early for the class, and a mixed group of yogis spread out their mats on the floor for an hour of yoga, followed by a cold beer.  We have attended this class in past years and have met some wonderful people and been guided by some good instructors.  We both practice yoga (Martha more regularly and more skillfully than I), we both like good beer, we both appreciate the benefits of yoga.  And yet, it is Saturday, and neither one of us is bending or brewing.  Instead, we are hunkering down in the condo on a stormy and windy day, recovering from the flu. 

Martha began to experience some symptoms on Tuesday, and by that evening was suffering from severe headache, a deep rattling cough, nausea, night sweats, and fatigue – the entire arsenal of the slings and arrows of outrageous influenza.  We both had the flu some 20 or 30 years ago and well remember how thoroughly devastating it is, and we have faithfully gotten our flu shots each year since then; but of course while the vaccine will reduce the severity of symptoms, it cannot prevent it.  We were at a table with many complete strangers on Sunday night, and my guess is that’s where we contracted it.

Fortunately, I did not have any symptoms at first (other than the feeling that I was “fighting something off”), and was able to provision us with groceries.  I even had time for a three-mile run on Thursday morning before taking Martha to an Urgent Care Center where, after a very long wait, she was diagnosed with Influenza A and prescribed three different prescription medicines.  She definitely did not have a good night despite the medicines, struck down with a headache more severe than she remembers ever having – “the sickest I have ever been in my life,” she said.  By Friday morning, I knew I was also coming down with something, but my symptoms were much milder – sneezing, unstoppable running nose - and I returned to the same Urgent Care Center where I also tested positive.

We are both feeling somehow better now on a blustery Saturday afternoon, wind and rain shaking the palm trees wildly and a turbulent surf roaring out in the ocean.  I had ambitiously planned to begin the first week of the New Year with a three-mile run (the only part of the plan which I miraculously completed), weight-lifting at the Sports Center in Morehead City, a five-mile run, and Bend and Brew.  Martha had a similar plan.  We both feel cheated, here in our first week of our Sabbatical and a New Year.  But as Robert Burns famously said, The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley.

The Gentle Surfcrash

I have to confess that I was feeling a little smug when I awoke a little after 7:00 a.m. on this first day of the new year, went down to the lobby, and asked if anyone else was up yet.  Only one other couple, I was told, who had a long drive ahead of them, had beat me to the starting line.  I ran a lap around the parking lot after my Tai Chi – no matter how short the distance, I like to start a new year with a run. 

The Hampton Inn was undergoing renovations, and “breakfast” was handed to me in two little brown bags, which I returned to our room to open.  Each bag contained a packaged muffin, a banana, an inexpensive energy bar, and a cannister of Fruit Loops.  I returned to the lobby bearing said Fruit Loops and asked if there were any adult cereals to be had, like Raisin Bran or Corn Flakes or Cheerios.  But, alas, that was the only cereal available for the entire hotel, probably the least appetizing breakfast cereal for the many visitors nursing hangovers.  Fortunately, Martha had packed home-made granola bars, a good way to start any new year.

Today was the longest drive of the journey, 357 miles (five hours and 40 minutes) on roads that became surprisingly busy, especially around Raleigh.  But we arrived safely in Kitty Hawk at the Hilton Garden Inn and glimpsed our first view of the ocean in ten months.  It was a cold, gray day, though, and there was a stiff breeze, and we did not venture onto the beach.

Instead, we drove north on Highway 12 to Duck, looking for a place to eat dinner, and were fortunate enough to grab what may have been the last table in the crowded restaurant NC Coast, where we ate dinner on my birthday two years ago.  It was very good! – She Crab Soup and seared sashimi tuna.  And it was nice to visit the familiar sights of a place where we stayed for 20 years for an annual vacation - Tommy's Market, Scarborough Faire, the Waterfront Shops - although everything was closed for the season except this lone restaurant.  There was a gorgeous sunset over the sound, as there frequently is in this part of the Outer Banks, and everyone was going outside to take photos of the ordinary miracle of the sun setting over open water.

The Hilton Garden Inn was also undergoing renovations, but unlike the Hampton Inn, guests could go downstairs and order, not Fruit Loops, but an adult breakfast from The Aviator Bar and Bistro (in honor of Wilbur and Orville Wright).  Martha ordered a bagel with cream cheese called The Katharine (named after Wilbur and Orville’s sister), and I ordered The Benedict (named, not after another Wright, but a New York City stockbroker named Lemuel Benedict, who in 1894 ordered the first Eggs Benedict at the Waldorf Hotel).  Isn’t Wikipedia a marvel?

Just off the breakfast area was a large, nearly vacant room, undergoing renovations.  I peered in and, much to my surprise, saw a grand piano sitting silently off to one side.  I went in to investigate and saw that it had been covered (desecrated) with graffiti from what appeared to be a wild New Year's Eve party.  There were sparkling pieces of glitter here and there, and when I opened the keyboard a tiara tumbled out.  But it was in perfect tune, and I dragged a chair in from the dining area, sat down, and ignoring the country music playing in the background, played through half-a-dozen Bach pieces.  Although I have a keyboard on which to practice until we return, I will play pianos whenever they serendipitously appear.  I have come upon wonderful pianos out here, once in a thrift store on Arendell Avenue (a fine Baldwin upright), and once at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum on Harker's Island (an elegant old grand piano).  Pianos find me.

Our drive was a shorter one today, north through Jarvisburg, Elizabeth City, and Edenton, where we had lunch at 309 Bistro on Main Street, which was also a place we have enjoyed in the past.  Edenton is a pretty little town with a lot of history, and in the past we have enjoyed tours of gardens and historical houses.  The Cupola House is a favorite of ours, and the front garden today was filled with Christmas trees decorated by local civic organizations.  The house was built in 1756–1758 and is the second oldest building in Edenton.

We drove westward and southward through Williamston, Washington, and finally New Bern and Morehead City, areas we knew intimately from our past nine years visiting this part of North Carolina, finally arriving in Atlantic Beach just before sunset.  We were surprised that the sun was setting so early, but 500 miles to the east sunrises and sunsets are noticeably earlier than in Highlands.  I walked out onto the familiar walkway to the Dune Top Deck and beheld once again the wide ocean and a rosy golden band of light stretched out on the horizon.  Home, for the winter.

This morning, I awoke in time for sunrise, and it was right on schedule, a single brilliant red beacon suddenly appearing on the horizon and rising into a goldern sky.  And then I stood and listened.  The gentle surfcrash, the end of all seeking.