Leaving Atlantic Beach

Tomorrow morning, we will leave Atlantic Beach for the year, first stopping in Raleigh at Martha's aunt Lizette's church in the afternoon for a 90th birthday celebration in honor of her.  It will be good to see her, and to personally thank her once again for letting us stay here during the coldest months of the winter.  We have had a good Sabbatical - reading, writing, hiking, exploring, running, practicing yoga, attending church - discovering and rediscovering the kind of life we want to live when this Sabbatical comes to an end.

As a runner - the ostensible topic of this blog, after all - it  has been especially satisfying, at the age of 70, to train for and complete my first half marathon in two years, and if all goes well I plan to run another one five weeks from today in Kitty Hawk.  Martha, too, has gotten into perhaps the best condition of her life as a runner (although, for both of us, the era of Personal Best times is probably gone).  We would not have been able to achieve this level of fitness without being able to spend this training time here in the winter, in a more forgiving climate than Highlands.

So as the days come to an end, we drove over to New Bern again for one last lunch at Morgan's.  It is always a treat to eat in this big, roomy place with the old brick walls and high ceilings.  Then I wandered around New Bern a little and found some surprising art on some of the brick walls.:

We both ran five miles this morning, one last time out the familiar road to Fort Macon where nearly all our training has taken place this year.  It was hard to believe that only a week ago, we were running a half marathon in Myrtle Beach.  Afterward, we drove across the high Atlantic Beach Causeway bridge to the Shuckin' Shack in Morehead City for one more taste of those char-grilled oysters.  Then we came back here and continued packing.

This morning, when I went out on the deck for my morning Tai Chi, I saw this big ship out on the horizon, moving slowly eastward, and then turning south and heading out to the open sea, perhaps making its own voyage back home.

"Every second
Every moment
Carries hope on its shoulders
Standing tall
Growing more and more
Stretching
Peeking
Over walls
Into horizons
Across the oceans."

- Horizons by Ane Brun and Dustin O'Halloran