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.
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.
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