The Pleasures of Reading

The mild weather this weekend was summed up and brought to a conclusion by rain, as it often is out here.  The light rain began after lunch on Saturday afternoon - nothing really heavy or cold, but enough to make a walk on the beach not very inviting.  Sunday the weather seemed to be wobbling back and forth, as if it could not decide what to do; the sky changed hourly.  And then overnight a frigid cold front rolled in from the west - brilliant blue skies, and a 20-mph wind.  The temperature was 23 degrees and the wind chill made it feel like 11.  I checked the weather in Highlands, and it was 11 degrees with a wind chill of a single lone one degree.  So we were better off here by just a little.

The cold continued all day, and this morning it was just below freezing, but the wind had died down.  Both of us wanted to run but we were undecided about the best time to go.  Finally, we decided to go mid-morning, and by the time we had braved the windy stairwell and gone down the driveway to Fort Macon Road, it felt much better - the bright sun helped, and the wind is always less dautning out on the road, away from the ocean.  As John Bingham famously said, "The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start."

But it is still so cold and windy that a walk on the beach would be uncomfortable.  Temperatures are forecast to rebound dramatically tomorrow, so after running some errands to the Carteret County Library in Beaufort, Friendly Market, and Blue Ocean, we returned here carrying, respectively, an armful of books, a take-away dinner, and a delicious product called wahoo salad from Blue Ocean that we sampled for the first time today.

So as I write at the dining-room table, the shadows are growing long out on the walkway.  Soon the horizon will turn a rosy hue and we will step out on the balcony and marvel at the brilliant sunset, visible from the deck between the adjoining houses.  And then, after dinner, I will settle on the sofa and launch into one of our most pleasurable occupations out here other than running and walking on the beach:  reading.

I will begin on my fourth book since we have been here, and Martha will begin her fifth.  What a wonderful thing it is to read a book, that simple pleasure we have enjoyed since childhood, that transports us into another world, so entirely unlike watching a movie or gazing at an iPhone.  I just love that wonderful, slightly-musty fragrance of an old book!  Is there any better way to spend an evening?

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! 

How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!

When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice