Beaufort and Clam Chowder

I have not missed my morning Tai Chi since we have been here, except that on Tuesday of this week the walkway was surprisingly covered in frost at that early hour, and so I went through my movements on the concrete walkway right outside our balcony.  Martha has not missed her own morning workouts, either, nor her almost-daily walks on the beach.  Yesterday we both noted that as we end our second week here, we feel lighter, healthier, more attuned to our natural environment, less filled with stress.

Low tide has come around at mid-morning now, so before lunch we walked in the opposite direction from the pier, east toward Fort Macon Park and the Bath House.  The beach was so wide!  And the ocean was quiet, lapping at the sand as gently as if it were the shore of a lake.

We found plenty of shells, high on the beach at what they call the wrack line, which marks the last high tide.  Up close to the dunes the Park Rangers had placed more Christmas trees, and Martha even spotted some tinsel on one of them.

There was a large colony of seagulls at the Bath House, a place where I have seen them often before.  They are always a joy to watch; I approached carefully to take a photo and they permitted me to to come within a very specific distance, and then they leapt into the air and soared gracefully away.

One of the reasons they congregate here is that people feed them.  I don't know why anyone would want to feed seagulls, other than perhaps to see huge numbers of them thronging the air all around.  A woman on the walkway had opened a bag of some kind of food, and it was a little scary, almost like a scene from Hitchcock's The Birds:

The remains of an old stone jetty extend out into the ocean here, and it is a little odd to see such large rocks, which must have come from miles and miles from here.   Where is the nearest quarry, I wondered?  Somewhere in the Piedmont?

After lunch we drove over the big new bridge to Beaufort for the 8th Annual Clam Chowder Cook-off, a benefit for the N. C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.  We would not have known that there had been a hurricane as powerful as Florence here only four months ago, other than tell-tale signs like brand-new fences and new siding here and there.  The waterfront looked as peaceful as always, and all the little restaurants and businesses were open.

I walked the few blocks to the Old Burying Ground but was disappointed to find it closed; a family walking by the gate at the same time told me it had been closed since the hurricane.  I looked over the fence and it did not appear that there was any damage, but there must have been fallen branches and perhaps damaged gravestones.

The grave of the "Girl in the Barrel of Rum" was visible from the Craven Street gate.  The story is told that the girl begged her father to take her to London, and he promised to return her to her mother's arms.  She died on the voyage home and her father brought her back in an empty barrel of rum.  To this day her little grave is piled high with coins, beads, flowers, tokens; some locals think it brings them good luck in their own voyage through life.

We had attended the Cook-off last year and had enjoyed it thoroughly.  While we were waiting for it to  begin, we walked out to look at this beautiful sunset over Beaufort Harbor.

I walked farther down Front Street to get a different perspective, and Martha called me on her phone. "Come back!" she said.  "There's a blue heron here!"  And there was, right off the dock on the harbor.  Perhaps this majestical bird had been the same one that had left that huge footprint in the sand at Fort Macon yesterday.  Martha took this photo:

And I, clumsily approaching on tip-toe, sent it soaring into the air as I usually do, and it winged its way off into the sunset over Beaufort Harbor.

Then a hundred hungry men and women crowded into the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, part of the Maritime Museum across the street, and sampled four different chowders and four different corn breads.

"I think I like this one the best," I told the young lady ladling out the tasty Downeast-style chowder I favored.  "But I just need to make sure!"  That's my choice (and also Martha's) - the one at the top in the photo.  Perfectly seasoned and not too heavy.

We told Gina, the director of the event, who remembered us from last year, that we were running a race in the morning.  "Some runners like to carbo-load," I told her, "But we clam-load!"