Return to Highlands

We left Duck on Sunday morning and it was a beautiful day for traveling - clear blue skies and little traffic on the road until we arrived in the Raleigh metro area when it suddenly became plentiful and fast.  What were all these people doing on the road on a Sunday afternoon?  I could not fight traffic like this every day.  We finally arrived at our go-to place in Winston-Salem these days, the Historic Brookstown Inn, and it was a relief to stretch cramped legs.  Monday morning was another gorgeous day; there was less and less traffic as we approached Highlands, and then in Brevard we got onto familiar two-lane roads again.  What a beautiful Town we live in!  It is always such a joy to drive down Main Street after an absence of some time.

We had taken a photo of our walkway when we left Highlands on April 7, and I took another when we returned today, Monday, April 30.  What a transformation in a little over three weeks!

The grass needed mowing, of course, and there were a few branches that had fallen.  The main damage was a broken window to the kitchen door, cracked into a hundred jigsaw-puzzle-like pieces, but still intact (until I tried to remove the door from its hinges two days later and it crumbled so suddenly and completely that the tarp I had spread out proved useless - we were still picking up glass a week later).  We think this happened from the impact of that big tree on our neighbor's property which we finally arranged to have taken down; she took a movie of the operation on her phone and texted it to me, it looked as if the might have been enough to break glass.

Fortunately, everything else seemed to be intact.  The full Pink Moon had materialized the night before, and it still shone brightly in our windows when we went to bed.  And it was so quiet, as it always is here in our neighborhood.  We had grown accustomed to the constant rhythmic crashing of the surf every night; now there were only a few crickets whispering in the moonlight.

It is good to be back home again.

Duck and Wine

Saturday morning I started out early on a ten-mile run, and since it was our last day here I visited all of our favorite places along the boardwalk.  It was a perfect morning, just a light breeze off the sound.  Cypress trees like this were just starting to put out their leaves.  I paused in the Clinton Chapel for a little prayer for the nameless boy who had been swept away.

At the kayak-launching area near Aqua Restaurant, seagulls had descended, each of them occupying a separate piling in the sound.  It looked as if there were exactly enough pilings for each gull.

I circled back to the Waterfront Shops, where preparations were already underway for today's Duck and Wine Festival.  We were looking forward to this annual event, for which we had stayed up until midnight on February 1 to buy tickets on-line.  They sell out rapidly! 

Area restaurants are challenged to create dishes from duck, a food that we seldom eat, and it is amazing what they can come up with:  duck meatballs, duck sausage, duck tacos, duck gumbo.

After a quick shower, we walked down to the Waterfront Shops and consumed more duck than we have in a year, or will in another year.  And it was all delicious.

And now it is Saturday and we are leaving in the morning, so there will be no more posts to this blog until we return to Highlands, sailing on the rough oceans of interstate highways, back to our safe little harbor in Clear Creek.

Swept Away

By mid-week, the weather finally moderated into one sunny, warm day after another.  Long runs in the morning, long walks on the beach in the afternoon.  Today we feasted on cold-boiled shrimp out on the deck with hush-puppies and coleslaw, that quintessential beach lunch that we like to have at least once while we are here.

This black cat was here last year, and I remember that I fed him a shrimp.  He hung around for a few days looking for more treats, but his coat was silky and his ribs were not showing so, although feral, he did not appear to be in danger of starving.

But yesterday I fed him a piece of salmon pastrami - a wonderful smoked salmon, thinly-sliced, that we discovered at Tommy's Market, just a half-mile down the road - and he devoured it eagerly.  This morning he returned with all of his friends, two other black cats and a skittish long-haired gray cat in the background.  We marveled that word had spread so quickly in the feline community, as if our generosity had been posted on a Facebook page.

Later, we walked on the beach and watched brown pelicans flying close to the waves, looking for their own lunch.  It is impressive to watch the way they fly in such precise formation.  I noticed that the waves were very powerful today, and it seemed that the rip current was active, too. 

As the afternoon lazed away, we sat in the sun and read books and soaked up the sun.  We heard a small engine approaching and this motorized paraglider appeared, flying up the beach to the north, and then a few minutes later back down to the south again.

But this solo paraglider had a more ominous purpose, we later learned.  The national news reported that a little boy (an only child), four-years old, walking with his mother on the beach in Kitty Hawk, just a few miles south of us, had been overpowered by a wave that knocked them both off their feet and then swept him away.  What a terrible thing!  The Washington Post reported, "Scouring the water for her son as another wave rushed in, the mother lost sight of him in the surf . . . He was gone."   Three words:  He was gone.  They found his hat washed up two miles north but never recovered his body.  "One man hovered over the waters in his powered paraglider for two hours in the hope of finding the boy."  So while we were enjoying a quiet lunch, wondering about this paraglider, a family had been devastated.

How dangerous this peaceful ocean can be sometimes!  We thought of this little boy and his family for days afterward, and kept them in our prayers.

Love, Sex, Tacos, and the I.R.S.

Martha makes a point of studying the local newspapers out here, scouring them for events we might want to attend - that's how she found about climbing the Bodie Island Light Station last week - and she found two events in Manteo today.  The first of these was the Second Annual OBX Taco Cook-Off, which sounded right up my line after running eight miles this morning.

The Taco Cook-Off raises money to help sent underprivileged children to summer camp at Jennette's Pier and it was attended by about 400 hungry taco lovers.  We showed up early at Ortega’z, where tickets were being sold, and watched several local restaurants set up taco stations in a little lane beside the restaurant.   I ended up sampling somewhere between eight and ten small tacos, filled with everything from duck to grain-fed beef to pork barbeque to meatballs, and even one featuring turkey, dressing, and cranberry sauce (my least favorite).  All the rest were delicious! 

In the background a little band was playing reggae music, and overhead a bright sun shone down through clouds that had drifted into little ridges, like sand does on the dunes.

Next came the rest of the title for this post - Love, Sex, and the I.R.S., a play presented by the Theatre of Dare (as in Dare County, or Virginia Dare), just across the bridge at Roanoke Island Festival Park.  It was a farce, fast-paced and hilarious, and the players, many of them debuting in this performance, were flawless. 

Jon Trachtman and Leslie Arthur are out of work musicians who room together in New York City. To save money, Jon has been filing tax returns listing the pair as married. The day of reckoning comes when the Internal Revenue Service informs the "couple" they're going to be investigated. Leslie masquerades as a housewife, aided by Jon's fiancee, Kate. Complicating matters further Leslie and Kate are having an affair behind Jon's back, Jon's mother drops in unexpectedly to meet her son's fiancee, and Leslie's ex girlfriend shows up demanding to know why Leslie has changed and won't see her anymore.

After everybody had ended up in the clothes of their proper gender, Jon's mother had been revived with "smelling salts" consisting of limburger cheese, true love had found itself, and the I.R.S. agent had been disposed of intact, we drove out to the Elizabethan Gardens and browsed in the little garden shop at the entrance.

It's a beautiful place and we have toured the gardens in past years, but it was growing late so we limited our visit to the garden shop.  I remember from a past visit, though, that there is a live oak tree here that is thought to have been alive when the first colonists arrived on Roanoke Island in 1585 - four years before Shakespeare wrote his first play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona.  It would have been a strong young sapling when Hamlet stood on a stage and said these words:

"What a piece of work is a man! 

How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! 

In form and moving how express and admirable! 

In action how like an angel, 

in apprehension how like a god! 

The beauty of the world. 

The paragon of animals!" 

Easels in the Gardens

We had stopped in Edenton on our way to Duck (see post of April 8) and returned to it again today to attend the biennial "Easels in the Gardens" program sponsored by the local garden club, historical association, arts council, and visitor center.  Proceeds went toward the centerpiece of the tour, the Cupola House and Gardens, a National Historic Landmark built in 1758 (which I take a photo of every time I come to Edenton).  It was the perfect restoration project, falling into disrepair, its owner in such financial distress that she was selling some of the woodwork downstairs before the house could be purchased by the Cupola House Association.

These civic groups organizing this event are all thriving, and the docents we met throughout the day seemed to be greatly enjoying themselves.  It is a celebration of all the things Edenton - which calls itself "the South's prettiest small town" - is passionate about:  art and gardening and history.  The tour of 20 private gardens featured area artists painting en plein air in many of the gardens, as well as groups of musicians scattered throughout.  The Renaissance Consort was set up under a trellis at the Cupola House, and I sat in apparently the only empty chair available and listened to them play for awhile.

What a treat to wander through the three gardens at the Cupola House - the orchard, the herb garden, and the pleasure garden - and take photos while Renaissance instruments played in the background.

We had lunch at 309 Bistro (309 South Broad Street), and since the tour did not begin until 1:00 p.m., Martha had time for some shopping while I found a book store and a cup of Earl Gray tea; we met at the Cupola House and then proceeded to the Penelope Barker House, which also had a wonderful display of orchids indoors.  It amazes me how different orchids look from one another, some of them delicate creatures like this:

And some of them bright, vivid splashes of color that look a lot like some of the garden flowers we were seeing outside.

I took too many photos to post on this blog, many of them illustrating things we would like to do with our own gardens back home, especially create more secluded areas and "garden rooms."  Martha noticed that many of the gardens were not perfect; they contained weeds, and the dirt was often not bordered with walls or fences but simply tapered into lawns, which also were not perfect.  The gardens at places like the Biltmore House, and in many homes in Highlands which we have toured, are unrealistically manicured; these gardens were clearly worked in and loved by the gardeners who tended them.

The tour meandered down King Street and Queen Street, east and west, and we saw haphazard plots in the shade and more formal gardens with fountains and statues.  The dogwoods were in full bloom.

And the azaleas were simply beautiful, also just at the peak of their beauty in a Spring that seems to be about three weeks ahead of Highlands.  We used to have some azaleas, near our bay window, and can't remember exactly what happened to them, but now we want to plant some more.

At the Cofield House on East King Street, we saw a long serpentine brick wall bordering the rear garden from the adjoining one (my photos did not do it justice).  And this white wisteria was out front dangling over the sidewalk.  I learned that this wisteria is depicted in Monet's Japanese bridge at Giverny.

Painters were set up here and there, but they seemed to be so concentrated in their tasks that we hesitated to approach and talk to them.  This horse-drawn carriage was circulating through the area and we went around the block behind the patient, stolid horse named Durk, and two nice local ladies.

This staghorn fern seemed to be growing from a cleft in a tall pine tree, somewhere along Queen Anne Creek - the Gettinger or the Elliott place, I think.

And it was right about here that I reluctantly stopped to take a picture of these two little fellows - pugs, if I am not mistaken, being transported from garden to garden in a double stroller.  We have loved more than one dog in our lives, but I am not a fan of small dogs, especially those who require strollers for transportation.  But I had to admit that "Winky" and "Twinky" - rescues both - were more endearing than most.  ("Winky" has only one eye.)

These gardens gave us so many ideas that it made us want to return to our own gardens, which we left neatly prepared for plants upon our return.  Here was a humble, unique use for a bathtub:

And then there were the old mansions, the antebellum homes which have somehow escaped fire and flood, the stately old dowagers standing under hundred-year-old trees.

The last stop on our tour was the home of local artist Robin Sams.  We have a special connection to Robin because she and her husband owned a little place here in Duck 18 years ago called "Peace and Plenty," (a name which we have adopted for our own home in Clear Creek), the first house we ever stayed in out here.  We introduced ourselves and she seemed pleased to hear that the little home she and her husband had labored on over the years inspired us in so many ways.  "It was a name of a place we stayed at in the Bahamas," she told us.  "And then a farm that we owned after that."  Her husband, she said, talked her into selling the Duck house at the height of the market for a sum of money that could not be turned down, but, sadly, the new owners tore the little house down and built a 10-bedroom rental on the site.  What a beautiful house Peace and Plenty was in our memories, though!  Its walls were decorated with huge paintings by Robin.

Robin's house in Edenton is right on the water.  We noticed that she has some lettuce planted between the flowers and wondered how they survived the rabbits; but then we met first one and then a second stately cat prowling the grounds fearlessly.  One of the flowerbeds contained this whimsical pony.

At 5:00 p.m., the tour ended, and we returned to the Cupola House to listen to excellent jazz by a black man with a muted trumpet and a keyboard, and they began passing plates of hors d'oeuvres.  We stayed as long as the drive back to Ocean Watch made prudent. 

Bodie Island Light Station

Our plan for today, after running this morning, was to climb yet another lighthouse, the Bodie Island, 45 minutes away, halfway to Hatteras, built in 1872.  Martha had read that it was going to open to the public today, and we have never climbed it before.  We drove all the way down through Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head, onto the narrow two-lane road to Hatteras where the ferry departs for Ocracoke.

They were still working on the  Bonner Bridge replacement project, and I tried without success to take a photo of the fifteen or twenty cranes at work, the bridge hanging half-constructed over Oregon Inlet.  It was a beautiful day for a drive, and we arrived at Bodie Island about 2:00 p.m.  "Bodie" is pronounced "Body" (like the human body), and was named after a family which settled here in the mid-1600s.  But alas, we found that the lighthouse climb had been sold out, and these two bodies, eager to climb, could only stand and gaze and take photos.

We were told by a nice Park Ranger that only eight people could climb at one time, and they had to be judiciously spaced between the landings.  Unlike Currituck and Hatteras, which can be thronged with climbers, the spiral stairs are free-standing and not attached to the walls (only being designed for a single light-keeper originally, I suppose) which severely restricted the number of people who could climb it in any one day.  We were told to come back at 9:00 a.m. on some indefinite morning.

So we traveled on, farther south, to Rodanthe and the site of the Richard Gere/Diane Lane tear-jerker movie.  The house in the movie had been about to fall into the ocean before it was rescued by an astute investor who bought it, had it moved to higher ground, and now leases it for huge sums of money to romantic young couples (who we hope will not meet the same sad end as Richard Gere).

But our goal was instead the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station, which we visit every year, and which sells a strong, hearty tea called "Lifeboat Tea," that we eagerly stock up on every year and drink nearly every afternoon all year long.

The roof shingles were being replaced, the docent told us, with cedar shakes from British Columbia, in order to be authentic but at a huge cost.  We bought three boxes of tea. 

Currituck Beach Light Station

How many photos have I taken of the Currituck Lighthouse in Corolla?  I think every time we have visited I have taken photos, because it is a beautiful, unpainted brick lighthouse, and the keepers houses are carefully restored.  Yesterday, we drove to the end of Highway 12, north from Duck through Corolla, and then to the very end of the road.  Here Highway 12 ends as a road and continues as a drive (at low tide) on the beach.  We know some people who have rented houses out in this area, far from shopping centers and restaurants, and accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicles (at low tide).

We did not see any of the wild horses this time - the so-called "Banker Ponies" - thought to be survivors from Spanish ships that came here 500 years ago.  A study has actually shown that the horses are genetically related to Spanish horses, so it is likely that these stories are true.  Several years ago, we went on a Wild Horse Tour (a popular activity out here) and saw some up close, and one year we happened to see a new-born foal, right across from this place where the road ends and where the horses are safely fenced-in from traffic.

Then we headed south, back to Corolla Village, where one of the restored buildings is occupied by Island Bookstore, where we spent some time looking around.  James Comey's book was prominently on display, but I do not want to devote any time to him (or, even more, to the vile little man who fired him) in this blog.  Can we leave all that behind for a couple of weeks?

Just around the corner is the iconic lighthouse, visible over the top of the trees for a long way, standing tall enough to be seen from the ocean.

Across the round courtyard is the main light keepers house, and the grounds are sweet with daffodils and dogwood trees just beginning to bloom.

The lighthouse was built in 1875, and the keepers house completed a year later.  But in 1933, the lighthouse was electrified, and the keepers were no longer necessary.  By the 1970s, this building had fallen into disrepair, open to the elements, vandalized for its pine floors and wainscoting.  The Outer Banks Conservationists (OBC) took over the site in 1980 and over time have restored it.  The smaller keepers house was so completely covered in vines and brush that, at first, nobody realized it was there; now it is a gift shop, with a nice bench on the front porch where a person with may sit all afternoon and people-watch.

It had been several years since we climbed Currituck, and the clear blue sky seem to invite us to go upward today, and so we climbed the 220 steps, all the way to the top.

The main keepers house down below looked like a doll house; the grounds were well-maintained, and we could see those who were not able to climb, it seemed to us, gazing wistfully upward.  We stopped at the second landing from the top and let a healthy young man pass by; he took a look at this old guy, I guess, and said "Almost there!" in the same tone of voice as the young man who these days offers to carry my groceries to my car at Ingles.

What a view!  Walking around the perimeter at the top, we could see to the north and the south how narrow this strand is, this barrier island, bounded on one side by the sound and the other by the ocean, as it extended to the Virginia state line.  And there below us was the Whalehead Club, a privately-owned manor built in the 1920s by wealthy northerners interested in hunting waterfowl.  Local literature refers to it as "The Original Beach House."

It is a beautiful building, and we had a picnic on the grounds out in front of it at a little table under the pine trees.

This arched bridge is a favorite of mine, and I have a photograph of it hanging in our house, taken several years ago on an old 35mm camera.

We concluded this restful day by visiting a shopping center called Timbuck II, which I love if only because of its name.  And we don't have to go to Mali to shop there.  And, finally, a stop at the Waterfront Shops before heading homes for dinner.  These shops are just a little over a half-mile from our house, Ocean Watch, the northern terminus of the Town Boardwalk, and the site of next weekend's "Duck and Wine Festival," which we will be attending thanks to our foresight in getting tickets on February 1, which required us to stay up until midnight to get on line - they sell out rapidly!

So it was a good day, climbing a lighthouse, wandering through the grounds of beautiful buildings.  I think we may be inspired to climb another lighthouse or two while we are here!

Patriots Day

Sunday morning we had planned to be running the Flying Pirate Half Marathon, but as I have said earlier in this blog we decided it would be better to wait until we have recovered from injuries and can run more competitive times.  I decided I needed to do a relatively long run instead and headed for the boardwalk, which was filled with other runners and plenty of walkers (many of them headed toward Duck Donuts, it seemed).  From there I went out to the Four Seasons point, then farther south, out to the ocean twice more, and finally out of Duck completely and into Southern Shores.

On the way back, I noticed thunderclouds gathering ominously on the horizon in what had been thus far a warm and sunny morning.  By the time I reached Scarborough Faire shopping center, I felt the first few drops of rain.  I decided to see what time the Island Bookstore opened tomorrow and was surprised to find it was open today.  "Oh, good," I said, poking in my head.  "You're open!  I need a new book for a rainy afternoon!"  It began to let up a little, and by the time I reached Marlin Drive - a satisfying ten miles - the sun was shining and my clothes were just a little wet.

That was not the case this morning in Boston, where temperatures were in the 30s and it was pouring rain, with a strong headwind, for the thousands of runners gathered together on Patriots Day for the 122nd running of the Boston Marathon.  I watched it all morning (on the TV that we never turn on here) as some of the expected favorites (Shalane Flanagan, Galen Rupp) did not do as well as expected, but others did.  The stars were all in the women's race, where in the worst conditions in memory six of the top eight finishers were Americans - what a seismic shift in distance running! - and the single most exceptional of them all was Desiree Linden, who authoritatively pulled away from everybody else in the pack and became the first American woman to win the race in 33 years, a feat as exceptional as Shalane Flanagan's win in New York in November.

In an act of pure sportsmanship, Desi had held back earlier in the race when Shalane had to take a bathroom break (very unusual in a marathoner and denoting problems she was having that resulted in a sixth place finish), helped her get back in the pack, and then finally seemed to make a decision to go for it, her first marathon win.  I have always admired Desi Linden, and in fact I well remember running this same race in 2011 (my only Boston marathon) where she lost by two seconds.  So her redemption was well-deserved.

The storms had vanished here overnight, and by the time we stopped watching the marathon the sun had come out and we sat out in the sun for awhile.  All afternoon, we thought about the other runners who were still out there in Boston, slogging through wind and rain, especially Brian Egler from our very own running club, a charity runner raising money for cancer research.  He had started in the last wave of runners at 11:30, and he did not finish until nearly 5:30 this afternoon.  For Desi and Shalane and the others, the battle was over in two-and-a-half hours, but Brian's lasted nearly six hours.  But as he often  says, "Running a marathon is hard (and surely this was his hardest one), but cancer is hard, too."

Now the evening is spread out against the sky (in a phrase I have stolen from T. S. Eliot), and we have walked out to the dune-top deck, wondering where all the cats have gone during last night's storm.  Aha!  There is one of them, sheltering under the deck:

We stood and watched the clouds floating over the ocean for awhile, and I was thinking of Brian.  I hope he is sheltering somewhere warm and dry now, celebrating with friends and family.

(And by the way, the book I returned to buy at the bookstore is an Ian Rankin mystery, and a good one to settle into for a day or two.)