Edenton Pilgrimage

Today we drove to Edenton to enjoy the Pilgrimage of Homes, sponsored by the Edenton Woman's Club.  Every other year, the Women's Club, in cooperation with other civic organizations, sponsors either "Easels in the Gardens" (which we attended last year) or this tour of some of the many historic homes in this beautiful city - "The South's Prettiest Small Town."  It is indeed a beautiful Town, and we have enjoyed stopping here many times on our way to or from Duck, or on a separate trip to a special event as we did today.

The Pilgrimage began at the Cupola House, ca. 1758, where we have often enjoyed the gardens outside but never seen the interior of the Jacobian-style house and its octagonal cupola.  We had a picnic lunch under the arbor in the garden; there are some good restaurants here, particularly 309 Bistro right across the street, but we knew Edenton would be filled with visitors because of this event and we wanted to eat plain home-made tuna sandwiches and pasta salad two days before a half marathon.

Everything was in bloom in this garden - dogwoods, irises - just beautiful!  Last year I remember listening to a quartet of musicians playing baroque music in this same arbor.

The house is a landmark in Edenton and very well known; a group of local citizens formed the Cupola House Association to purchase and protect the old house, and that was the beginning of much of the passionate interest in historic preservation here.

Docents dressed in period clothing met us at the door of all of these homes, and one of them led us inside the Cupola House, once occupied by Dr. Samuel Dickinson.  We did not linger long at the display of his surgical instruments, including the amputation saw.  Up the narrow staircase we walked, this tall Roadrunner ducking low.  In the upstairs bedroom was a crib by the mother's bed and an adjoining children's room where three children were raised.  One of the little girls died.  "And of course," our docent said, "There is a ghost here."  Apparently the little bed is made up every night and the sheets pulled tight, but in the morning the corner is wrinkled as if someone has tried to climb back in bed.

Across the street was Edenton Bay Trading Company, and we relaxed for a while in the walled-in brick courtyard out back before beginning the Pilgrimage in earnest.

It was a short stroll down East King Street to the Howard B. Chappell House, ca. 1911, with its broad steps.   We wandered through large, high-ceilinged rooms, nice and cool in the summer but, one of the docents told us, cold in the winter - thus the fireplace in every room.

Next down the street was the beautiful Haywood C. Privott House, ca. 1900, three-stories in a Queen Anne Style with towers, domed front porches, and arched doorways.  Privott built the house using some of the 20,000 bricks left over from the Edenton Cotton Mill (at the end of the street).

I asked the owner if I could play the piano in the parlor, and she readily agreed, so I played a few bars of the Prelude in C from the Well-Tempered Clavier.

In one of the back rooms, we saw this sign over the mantle, under a painting of the family's plantation miles away from here where the motto was also featured:  "We ain't mad with nobody."  And so I hope that this pacifism caused it to be spared from destruction by the Union Army during the Civil War. 

These transom windows all opened and could be finely adjusted, and I examined with interest and great respect the clever handle that opened it and kept it in place (on the left).

And this lovely tiled planter was just outside the back door, whether original or a later addition nobody seemed to know.  These homes have been renovated many times between the 18th and 19th centuries and today.

We saw these unusual white wisteria next door, and I remembered that I had written a poem about them last year.

And the white Wisteria, floribunda Alba,

Which grows in Monet's garden in Giverny,

Spills over the sidewalk onto East King Street

As it does over that luminous Japanese bridge.

Farther on King Street we toured the James Coffield House, ca. 1764, filled with antique furniture, and this wonderful little kitchen with copper pans hanging on a chain from the ceiling.

The Hollowell House, ca. 1897, had been moved from another location in the 1970s.  Family antiques abounded inside.

This huge Japanese mural took up an entire wall; similar murals, the owner said, are in a house owned by a brother in the family, and in Kyoto, Japan.

At the end of King Street was the Cotton Mill, built in 1898 to manufacture "ring-spun thread" (according to our brochure).  The Mill was converted into condominiums in 1995 in a tasteful layout of two-story units using the original wooden floors. 

One of the original buildings has been preserved as the Edenton Cotton Mill Museum of History, complete with a scale model of the mill and its surrounding area.

Walking back down Queen Street, we noticed many homes in identical architectural form, some of the 70 homes constructed here from 1899 to 1923 - a community of Mill Workers, thriving here under the spreading live oak trees and crepe myrtles.

On 304 Queen Street stands one of these homes, the Lane House, which historians believe is the oldest house in North Carolina, ca. 1718.  Linda and Steve Lane were renovating the property when a local contractor noticed several unusual features in the buildings; the inside of the house was stripped to its bare beams and columns, shag carpet was removed, and the strong original bones of a 1718 house was revealed.

The next house on Queen Street was a little bungalow that dates to 1790, the Wheeler House.  A simple structure, it has been lovingly restored by many owners.  "Each Edenton family who has lived here has added their own style and choices," the brochure says.

Our docent drew attention to the picture-holders in most of the rooms which were attached to the wall because pictures cannot easily be hung on a plaster wall.

Four different kinds of nails had been discovered in the house, and were lovingly displayed in one of the rooms.

We had completed a large circle back to Broad Street and St. Paul's Episcopal Church, ca. 1736.  It is the second oldest church in North Carolina.  A remarkable event occured here in 1947; serious issues were discovered in the structure, and all of the interior furnishings and details were removed to execute the repairs.  A fire in 1940 destroyed all but the brick walls, but the furnishings had been stored in a safe place and were re-installed to its early 1800s state.

After St. Paul's, Martha said she wanted to explore some of the shops on Broad Street in downtown Edenton.  So I continued on to the few houses on the west side of Town.  The Bond McMullen House, ca. 1860, was next down Church Street; the original entrance had been changed to the adjoining street and the big columns set out front in the Colonial Revival design popular at the time.  These houses have all been restored and renovated many times.

One of the owners had traveled extensively and collected some exquisite Japanese prints, which I photographed.  "Do you own an old home?" the docent asked.  "No, we live in a home we designed and built in 1983, but we have filled it with Oriental art like this," I said.

The house on the corner of Granville and King was not on the tour - there was a Sotheby's sign on the lawn - but I lingered beneath the arbor of wisteria for a little while.

Across the Street, the imposing Pembroke Hall, ca. 1850, stands on a bluff overlooking Edenton Bay.  The grounds are extensive, with huge lawns extending away from the circular drive and its beautiful fountain.

The rooms inside were high-ceilinged and furnished with antiques.  I was reminded of the setting of a Jane Austen novel.

Bear with me, readers of this Blog!  We have nearly completed our tour, returning again to Broad Street and downtown Edenton.  But before that, we must stop at Beverly Hall (another name from a Jane Austen novel, perhaps?), originally a private bank, with the vault still displayed off the front room.  Notice the bars on walls, ceilings, and even floor.

 

In the hallway off the kitchen, two huge Russian wolf hounds snoozed on the floor, as big as Shetland ponies and just as gentle.

 

When I went out the back door and down the steps, I remembered that the extensive gardens there were featured in the "Easels in the Gardens" tour last year.  This cupid was enclosed in a boxwood circle, to prevent its escape I thought.

 

My feet were, I must admit, just a little tired after all of this walking.  But it was the perfect thing to do two days before a half marathon - slow, easy walking, at the end of this taper period before the race.  I was somehow reminded of that long, convoluted first sentence of Finnegan's Wake:  "A lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."  I had found myself back on the corner of Broad Street and Water Street by a commodius vicus of recirculation, as it were, and my phone rang at that very instant; it was Martha, and we agreed to end our Pilgrimage together in the same place we had begun, in the little brick courtyard behind Edenton Bay Trading Company, before driving back to Duck.  We sat down and talked about the day, this beautiful creature behind me - angel? nymph? - gazing up at the bright blue sky with high clouds scudding past.

The Boardwalk

We slept with the bedroom screened-door open last night so that we could hear the ocean all night, and it was cool enough that I closed it early this morning.  A cold front had come through overnight (temperatures in the 50s - cold is relative in April at the Outer Banks!) and it was blustery this morning out on the dune-top deck.  But the sun soon broke through and it quickly turned into a beautiful, sunny day, with just a little sharpness in the air. This is the morning in our training schedule when we planned to complete one last, easy three-mile run before the half marathon on Sunday. 
 
We both started out separately, but we ended up running the same route, although in opposite directions, so that we never saw each other.  I ran to one end of the Town Boardwalk in the Waterfront Shops and all the way to its end at Aqua Restaurant, then back along Highway 12.  It was so nice to see all of our usual landmarks, and we both felt strong and loose, not as sluggish as on Monday morning after two days of driving.

One of the landmarks along the Boardwalk was Wave Pizza, which we discovered was scheduled to open today for the season.  We both had the same idea, and after returning that's where we went for lunch, ordering the Surfer Girl pizza, and enjoying the ambiance of the boardwalk and the warm sunshine."First pizza of 2019!" I told our server.

And then we walked along the same route on which we had run earlier.  The Town of Duck is to be commended for this 0.78-mile boardwalk connecting one end of Town with another, along the sound and its maritime forest, and also connecting restaurants and shopping centers. 

The pollen is heavy this year, and at one place in the quiet eddies of the sound you could see it floating on top of the water, a thick greenish-yellow film on the water.

Every year, we stop to visit the Clinton chapel at the United Methodist Church, a place we first learned about from Martha's Aunt Lizette, who visited here years ago.  It is a little oasis of spiritual calm back here on Currituck Sound.  The Bible invariably lies open at one of the Psalms.

I was grateful that someone had tacked up a little sign, saying "Duck," on the live oak tree that spreads its long limbs across the boardwalk just north of Clinton Chapel.

"Is this your Town?" a woman asked me.  Her husband had a beard much longer than mine and carried a big camera on a tripod over his shoulder, taking photos of the sound and of the maritime forest.  "No, but I am a frequent visitor," I replied.  "We've been coming here for 20 years."

Out in the sound, they have built platforms for ospreys to nest, and I watched a pair who seemed to be watching carefully over their newborn young.

It was a beautiful day!  I walked all the way down to the Waterfront Shops, where the day had begun for me, and found a good cup of coffee at Duck's Cottage Coffee and Books. 

And then I sat on a bench overlooking the sound, and simply watched the ducks, the little boats going to and fro, and the gentle ripples on the water.

Fitness, Cats, and Books

The Pine Island Fitness Center is just a little over seven miles from here, and that's where I drove this morning.  The race is still five days away, so this seemed like the opportune time for a session of light weight-lifting.  The tennis instructor who mans the front desk is always friendly, and he also happens to play bass in the very good blues band that has played at the finish line of the Flying Pirate and also at the Duck and Wine Festival for the past two or three years.  I had the place to myself.

There was still a little time before lunch, so I drove to the little independent bookstore in the Scarborough Faire shopping center, The Island Bookstore, to search for one or two books on my list.  I ended up with a hard-cover book I had been looking for, Women Rowing North, by Mary Pipher; I had heard Ms. Pipher being interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, and immediately put it on my list.  Ms. Pipher cites a UK study finding that women are happiest between the ages of 65 and 79; she herself just turned 70, and the book explores how older women (and men) can adapt to the new circumstances of what the French call Ces misères de l'âge.  Martha will enjoy this book, but I am finding lots of wisdom in it as well.

I spent more time than I had intended at the bookstore, chatting with the woman at the desk; my OBX Marathon shirt drew her attention, and it turned out that she was a runner herself who had run the OBX half marathon (the one in November, not the Flying Pirate).  So we ended up talking about running and life and aging (she just turned 60, I just turned 70, and I was telling her about our friend Fred who has just turned 80.).  I started to recommend the book that I had just purchased, but thought she might not appreciate being told she is "rowing north."  Pipher writes, "We need to make an effort, choose a positive attitude, and maintain a strong sense of direction as we travel toward winter and the land of snow and ice," which is a land we might not want to discuss with casual acquaintances, after all.

On the way to the bookstore, I almost tripped over this frisky little cat, who jumped at me from around a corner and clearly wanted to play.

"She just showed up one day," one of the shop-keepers in Scarborough Faire told me.  "Are you feeding her?" I asked.  "Oh yes, we're all feeding her."  That explained it.  Cats . . .

This afternoon, we explored some of our old haunts in Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, and I stopped in at the very nice Kitty Hawk Public Library to check out the author Peter Robinson, whose classic British Mystery books I have recently discovered. 

They had the next one on my list, but I was told that my Fontana Regonal Library card was no good here, nor was my Pamlico -Carteret one from Beaufort.  My options, I was nicely told, were to read the book in a comfortable chair by the window as long as I liked, or pay $25.00 for a temporary library card.  Or I could rummage through a head-spinning assortment of books for sale on a big table (where I found Stephen King shoulder to shoulder with James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, as if they were subway passengers uncomfortably heading for the same station.)

I quickly realized that I would much prefer taking off my shoes in the evening and curling up on the sofa at Ocean Watch, so I declined the temporary library card and instead I began the next Robert Galbraith (the pen name for J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter children's books), Lethal White, which I gave Martha for Christmas and which she has completed. 

Like the first three Galbraith books, it is very good! - three-dimensional, complex characters, and an entertaining mystery as well.  So I stayed up reading on the aforesaid sofa, listening to the lulling sound of the ocean outside the open screened porch until I could no longer stay awake.

First Day in Duck

We both found ourselves waking up early this morning, 6:30 a.m. or so.  As in Atlantic Beach, it is not easy to sleep in when you are staying oceanfront and the sun is banging on the window with two fists:  "Wake up, wake up!"  I started the coffee and we went outside to watch this daily miracle; right on time, the brilliant red arc of the sun appeared over the ocean, rising higher and higher in the sky.

"Best way to start off the morning in Duck, North Carolina," I posted on Facebook.  "Beautiful sunrise, beautiful wife!"

We enjoyed breakfast and watched the sun rising higher and higher on this mild day, our first day in Duck.  We were both ready to run, and by 9:00 a.m. we were headed west on Marlin Drive into the heart of Duck, looking around at the familiar old places and the new improvements, like the sidewalk on both sides of the road (instead of sharing the bicycle lane).  Scarborough Faire, Fishbones Restaurant, Aqua - so many wonderful memories of our 20 years of staying here.

I started out first, but Martha caught up and passed me at the Duck Town Park, and we passed each other again on the sidewalk that runs along Four Seasons out to the Ocean.  Such a beautiful morning!  Warm and sunny, with just a little breeze now and then.  We both completed four miles before returning to Ocean Watch and sitting in the sun for awhile.  I realized that this was the first time this year that I ended a run wet with perspiration.

And so the day passed by, our first day in Duck, running past all of our familiar places, reminding ourselves of how fortunate we are in being able to stay here for two or three weeks.  And now I sit at the dining room table, writing another post to this blog, listening through the open screened-in porch to the soft, rhythmic sound of the ocean, which soon will lull us to sleep. 

Life is good.

Big Mill to Duck

When we awoke at the Big Mill after a night of sound sleep - there is little traffic on Big Mill Road - fog had settled in again.  I went outside and walked around the yard a little to find a good place for my morning Tai Chi, finally settling on the driveway next to the pond.

The two cats who had kept their patrol the previous evening were nowhere to be seen (no doubt settled at the foot of Chloe's bed), but I disturbed the purple martins nesting in great numbers next to the pond.  They flew in huge circles above me, making eerie buzzing sounds that fell outside the usual spectrum of chirps and warbles.

Breakfast is always a treat at the Big Mill.  The jams and preserves are made by Chloe from fruit grown at the farm, and all of the other menu items are locally-sourced.  We had the feeling that she knew the name of the pig who wound up in the sausage-cheese-grits quiche.

We stopped for lunch - Reuben sandwiches at the Weeping Radish Eco Farm, one of our usual stops - and then wandered through the rambling rooms of the Cotton Gin in Jarvisburg, in the same location since 1929.

We always manage to find something or other to buy there, and Martha found some nice items while I watched the newest addition to the operation, the hang gliding taking place in the big flat fields out back.

I watched as an ultra-light plane took off, towing a hang-glider behind.  It rose higher and higher in the sky until it was barely visible to the naked eye.

Then the plane circled and landed in the field, leaving the hang-glider aloft, circling like a hawk on the thermals, like the ones we often see over our little valley in Clear Creek.  Lower and lower it descended.

And finally it came to rest on the same grass runway from which it had been towed aloft.  I can only imaging what a ride it must have been!  A man was standing out in the parking lot watching, too, and he asked, "Is that someone you know?"  "No," I replied, "Just watching.  It's not on my bucket list, but who knows?"

Soon we were crossing the Wright Memorial Bridge from Point Harbor to Kitty Hawk, familiar to us in many ways.  We once went kayaking at the Kitty Hawk Kayak School.  And the starting line to the Flying Pirate Half Marathon is here, too, just a little ways down The Woods Road.

A brief stop at Harris Teeter to stock up on the essentials, and then we were checking in at Twiddy in Duck.  The folks there are professionally friendly, instantly making you feel at home.  "Have you stayed here before?" a smiling young woman asked us.  "Oh yes, many times!"  We have actually stayed in this same little house for ten years.  It must be the smallest house in this part of the Outer Banks, snuggling low between the sand dunes, the ocean just visible outside the quaint, screened-in porch, where I have often enjoyed watching the rain fall.

I wrote a poem here in 2012, which was a finalist in the James Applewhite Poetry Competition and published in the N. C. Literary Review in 2014.

"Rainy day at the beach and nothing to do,

Il dolce far niente.  Rain streaks the porch screen,

Leaving little strands of dangling pearls."

Sassafras Gap to Big Mill

Conditions were perfect for travel on Saturday morning.  Fog had drifted in overnight, and instead of drifting away it remained all morning, glowing brighter and brighter as we loaded up our trusty Honda CRV.  We took a picture of the walkway to the back door as we sometimes do when we are going to be gone for some time.  It will be interesting to see how green everything becomes in three weeks, the hostas breaking free from the ground and spreading along the rock wall.

By the time we reached Brevard the fog had mostly burned away, and sunshine broke through across the long stretch of I-40 through Raleigh to Rocky Mount.  We stopped for a picnic lunch somewhere near Hickory, and then had a light supper in Rocky Mount.  It is always a relief to escape the heavy traffic of metro Raleigh and head relentlessly east on quiet four-lane roads, and finally on two-lane roads through that flat Eastern North Carolina landscape, marked by falling-down houses and toppled tobacco barns and big flat fields.  We arrived in Williamston at the Big Mill (see previous post) early enough to talk to Chloe, the proprietor of this remarkable little B & B, and to wander around the grounds and take some photos.

It is a photographer's dream!  Old trucks, the original farm outbuildings filled with tools and license plates, now transformed into a first-class B & B recently featured in "Our State" magazine.  Our room was just perfect - the Pack House suite, renovated last year, originally a shed behind the Corn Crib where tobacco was packed.  The interior was decorated with Chloe's signature Mexican tiles and plates and pictures by Georgia O'Keeffe on the walls.  We especially loved the curved lintels above the doors!

We strolled outside and found ourselves greeted by two cats, who immediately began wrapping themselves around my trouser leg.  The one called "Raisin" took up a position right outside our door, and seemed determined to get inside; I supposed she had often insinuated herself into the hearts of cat lovers staying here and perhaps even found herself sleeping on their bed all night.

And then we took one final walk before turning in, out under the hundred-year-old cypress trees, to gaze across the big empty fields, newly plowed and waiting for soybeans to be planted, where a gorgeous sunset glowed behind the long-leaf pines.

The Ocean Is Calling Again

Anybody expecting to read daily or near-daily posts on this blog, as they might have seen during January and February, would have been disappointed this month.  This is only the third post since our return to Highlands.  The reason for this suspension of activity is that the days have been filled with ordinary events.  We scheduled dental appointments and ophthalmologist appointments; we filed our State and Federal Income Taxes; we took the Mini and the Honda out to the shop for oil changes and other work.  We did manage to find time for the Highlands-Cashiers Players dinner theater and a cute performance by the North Georgia Players Sunday afternoon, but it has been mostly unexciting material.

Our running has gone well, though, and we are now in that suspended state of training called the Taper, when weekly mileage is cut in half and cut in half again.  I was tempted to pick up the pace a little during my three-mile run this morning, but I remembered that the Flying Pirate Half Marathon is only eleven days from now and this is not the time for speed-work.  Two cold mornings this week were replaced by a lovely, warm afternoon, and as part of her training Martha ran on the Franklin High School track (I opted to run in Highlands earlier).  I have run on this track in the past, and I do appreciate the simplicity and order of a track workout on a perfect surface.  But Martha was a little disappointed to find the surface had deteriorated in recent years, patched like a street with many potholes.  Tracks are not supposed to be like that.

It was warm in Franklin, up in the 60s, and despite the high pollen count the conditions were just beautiful.  Trees at that lower elevation have not only flowered but have put out the bright green leaves of early Spring, like young ladies trying out new summer dresses.  There may be a chilly morning or two remaining on the horizon, but it seems as if we have seen the worst of the winter.

We will be leaving on Saturday, a hard drive from here to Williamston, where we will spend the night at a wonderful place that I have written about in this blog in the past, the Big Mill Bed and Breakfast.  We have stayed there at least three times on our way to the northern Outer Banks.  It is a quirky little place, consisting of five guest rooms in an old barn and farmhouse on 200 acres of land, just a couple of miles down the road from the Hampton Inn where we used to stay - and less expensive.  My clever wife found the Big Mill, and in its own way it is as special and unique as the Historic Brookstown Inn in Winston-Salem.  I well remember our first stay there in the room they call "The Corn Crib," inside this old barn, beautifully decorated with Mexican tiles, and stocked with goodies freshly-baked by Chloe, the proprietor.

We do not expect to arrive until the evening, when we hope we will have a little time to shake out stiff legs and explore the gardens, grounds, and outbuildings.

And then, on Sunday morning, we will drive to Duck, and will stay in the small rental cottage where we usually stay, Ocean Watch.  We have many wonderful memories of this place, where we have run, eaten fresh seafood, written poetry, read books, and watched ghost crabs scuttle into their little holes out on the beach.

For the next two days, we will be making preparations for the long drive to the ocean, a little farther than Atlantic Beach but no less wonderful.  And, only one week later, we will find ourselves standing on what I called in my last post - before the typographical error was caught by my sharp-eyed proof-reading wife, "the startling line."

And so this blog will fall silent for a few days until our arrival at the (sometimes startling) Atlantic Ocean.