Beaufort Candlelight Tour

Other than the Crystal Coast Christmas Flotilla (see last Saturday’s post) we have not attended any events here this year.  Had we stayed in Highlands over the holidays and had there not been a raging pandemic underway, we would have enjoyed the annual Christmas Reading by the Highlands-Cashiers Players, perhaps a concert or two, and Advent and Christmas Eve services in a church.  Here on the coast we would have found Christmas programs, too, and enjoyed attending the First United Methodist Church. 

Martha had learned about the Flotilla, and yesterday she identified two more events for us:  the Christmas Parade in downtown Morehead City and the Christmas Candlelight Tour in Beaufort.  Our own parade in Highlands had been cancelled this year, so we were looking forward to seeing all of those humble elements of a small-town parade, from decorated floats to high school bands trying earnestly to play in tune.  Years ago we stumbled upon such a parade in Clayton, Georgia, and it lasted an hour or more.  There were even dump trucks festooned with Christmas lights.  We may have been the only spectators because the rest of the population of Clayton seemed to be taking part in the parade.

I went to the post office and grocery store and rushed back to the condo, and just as we were preparing to leave and were discussing where to park, Martha learned that the parade had been cancelled by Morehead City’s Mayor.  Of course, like so many other events, that made perfect sense.  If it was anything like our parade in Highlands, the sidewalks would have been packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and even with face masks it would have been worrying.  We have been adopting the attitude that everyone around us, in stores and sidewalks, could be asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19, and behaving accordingly.

The other event was a Candlelight Tour in Beaufort organized by the Beaufort Historical Association.  We have been to their events before and discovered that there are many, many well-informed docents and volunteers here who love the history of what was named “Best Small Town” by USA Today several years ago.  Tickets were limited and instructions to wear a mask and social distance were posted everywhere, so we thought it would be safe, especially if we avoided crowding into small buildings. 

Beaufort is indeed a pretty little town, and never more so than at sunset along the waterfront on Taylor’s Creek, where sailing boats and yachts from around the country were docked.  It was a mild, pleasant night, in the 60s.  We had arrived early and walked down to the waterfront, then back into the historic district where we sat in rocking chairs on the front porch of the historic Josiah Bell House (ca 1825) waiting for it to become dark.  Then we walked down Ann Street, where several of the homes were decorated and the sidewalks were lined with luminaries in places.

We had never been inside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (ca 1857), which was nicely decorated for the advent season, the third candle already burning in the advent wreaths in the front of the sanctuary. 

Some of the historic inns were on the tour, too– the Beaufort Inn, the Inn on Turner, the Ann Street Inn – but we did not feel comfortable going inside them.  Farther down Ann Street in the other direction was the First Baptist Church (ca 1851), which we had been told had an “Amazing Nativity Scene.”  But we saw only a small one set up in the narthex, and a woman told us that the live nativity scene had been cancelled due to Covid.  But she let us walk to the front of the beautiful sanctuary, where a young woman began playing carols on a grand piano.

“This is interesting,” the woman said, and pointed to what I took to be a small crib in front of the church.  She opened it and revealed a small keyboard, that is, one having smaller keys, as a child would play.  It was indeed a child’s treadle organ.  She said that after the last hurricane it had been thrown out in the street, taken for trash apparently.  A local woodworker had seen it, rescued it, rebuilt it, and returned it to the church, where we presume small gifted hands still play “Away in a Manger” this time of year.

I was surprised when, as we left, the woman asked me to put my name and phone number on a piece of paper “in case we need to track you down because of Covid.”  I was both reassured that they were setting up potential contact tracing, but worried about handling the pen, but I dutifully signed my name, the first on the list, and used my hand sanitizer.

Next to the church is one of the most famous historic sites in Beaufort, the Old Burying Ground, dating from the early 1700s.  We have toured it more than once in the past and been fascinated by some of the graves and stories associated with them.  “Have you been here before?” a man in period clothing and carrying a lantern asked us at the gate.  ‘Oh yes, many times,” I said.  “We’ve seen the soldier buried standing up, and the girl in the barrel of rum.”  Both true, and subject of a poem I wrote many years ago about this ghostly place. 

The girl in the barrel of rum is a particular favorite of locals, who often decorate the grave with flowers, shells, coins, and other trinkets, thinking it might bring them luck.

 
The girl begged her father to take her to London, the story goes, and her mother agreed upon condition that he return the girl to her again.  She died on the voyage home.

And her father, true to his word, as fathers are,
Brought her back in this barrel of rum. 
Her rounded little grave is piled with tokens,
Coins, flowers, metro passes:  trinkets from the future.

This is a burying ground, I learned, rather than a cemetery, because it is not connected to any church.  It was very dark, and footing is treacherous in the burying ground even by daylight, so we decided to leave the tour early and return in the daylight of another day.  

By now it was completely dark and luminaries had been lit all over the district.  We saw some dazzling displays of lights on the way back to the car, here on this unseasonably warm day, the day before the third Sunday in Advent.

We re-crossed those bridges, leaving that place
Of silent death, returning to another shore.
Were we changed by wandering among silent graves?
Dry oak leaves were slippery underfoot,
And the shade under those trees was lovely and dark,
The churches tall and comforting, storm-weathered,
Wanting the good hard work of scraping and re-painting.

So many of the events that we have enjoyed during this season of the year have been cancelled.  So much of our lives have been cancelled.  But Martha reminded me that not everything is cancelled. She found this quotation and posted it in the condo so we could remember that this is the season of hope.

Wasting Time

Low tide has come round again, as it always does,
The very bottom of tide-breath exhaled,
A winter solstice of water.
The great wheel turning and returning again
To the same shore, home again.

The tide table shows low tide coming just a little later, twice each day, about an hour later from day to day.  This morning it came round again to 9:40 a.m., so it was a good time to walk on the beach, and it will also be an opportunity to run on the beach tomorrow and Sunday. 

Many of the people who were here for Thanksgiving have left, perhaps only a dozen or so units occupied out of 90.  So it is pleasant to have the walkway and dune-top deck to ourselves (and safer, too) as well as the beach.  It was wide and flat and nearly deserted, even mid-morning.  Martha noticed these unusual markings here and there a few feet from where the surf was breaking.

The mystery was solved in a little while.  This man was waving a metal detector back and forth, and digging when he found something interesting.  What could he have been finding?  I would have asked him, but he had thick earphones on and was listening intently.  

This man was out digging, too, not in the sand but the ocean, standing in the surf in waders, his little red wagonful of supplies by his side – bait and cooler and rods and reels.  Again I marvel at the patience of these surf fishermen, who seem content to spend an entire day standing in the surf.  I wrote this in a poem years ago:

Fishing:
What a glorious
Waste of time.

This huge colony of gulls was even more patient than the fisherman, assembled down by the Picnic Area’s beach and the rock jetty, waiting to see what the tide brings in.

It was a good day for a walk on the beach.  Wasting time, as Otis Redding said:

Now I'm just gon' sit, at the dock of the bay
Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh yeah
Sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

So Many Good Books to Read

We have a saying in our part of the country:  If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.  The same can be said about Atlantic Beach, where each day brings a drastic change, often playing out very visibly before our eyes.  Dramatic dark clouds may gather on the horizon over the ocean, or smaller clouds will detach themselves and fly swiftly overhead, casting quickly-moving shadows over the balcony.  We do not see the weather playing out in such a visible way in our valley in Highlands, where an afternoon thunderstorm may announce itself with a boom and suddenly appear over the ridge, perhaps catching us by surprise.

Yesterday was no exception.  After our hike on Monday afternoon, it  began to drizzle rain, and then the wind picked up.  By morning, the rain had vanished and it had turned much colder, 32 degrees with a brisk 16 mph wind that made it feel like 21.  I started out the walkway for my morning Tai Chi but after a few steps I realized the surface was frozen, ice gleaming ahead of me.  

I walked gingerly back and began the familiar movements under the building here:  commencing form, parting the horse’s mane, white crane spreads its wings, and on to the end.  I like to run different kinds of workouts and lift weights in different ways, but it is comforting to begin each day with these same familiar movements, day after day, like pearls on a string, as someone once said.

The wind did not die down very much during the day, and it still cut sharply when I went out at 5:30 p.m. for our first experience with take-out food here besides Friendly Market (which is all take-out).  Martha had found that Amos Mosquito, a restaurant just down the road, had different and interesting specials each night they were open, and we had decided to split the entrée - grilled mahi, fiesta rice, and sautéed green beans (and delicious).  As with most restaurants these days, there was plenty for both of us.  

When times were “normal,” we would eat here once or twice each winter, usually Valentines Day or my birthday.  It’s an interesting name, and it originated from a mis-telling of an old-knock-knock joke by founder and original chef Hallock Cooper:

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Amos.
Amos who?
A mosquito!

The website explains:  During a brainstorming session someone suggested “Skeeter’s”. We all liked it because it went along with our décor, but felt it didn’t sound nice enough to reflect the high quality food and service we planned on providing. That’s when Pam remembered how Hallock would mis-tell this joke: Hallock always said “Amos Mosquito” instead of “a mosquito.”

The interior is dark and cozy and festooned with Spanish moss.  But that was back in normal days when we would actually eat in a restaurant – imagine!

This morning the wind had still not died down much, but I knew I could not let another day go by, so I completed another set of “Picnic Area Intervals.”  The wind was coming directly out of the west, so on my return to the condo it was biting shrewdly.  If it had been just a little stronger I might have called this a character-building run.

Now I sit at the table posting to this blog, having gone to Blue Ocean, our local seafood market, for our dinner tonight – crabcakes, prepared here by Martha, with a medley of roasted onions, potatoes, and carrots - and very likely the same crabcakes that Amos Mosquito will be serving tonight, at one-fourth the cost and in a reasonably-sized portion.  

After dinner, both of us will return to our books as we do every evening.  I’m pretty sure that the television works.

There it is, back behind the fresh herbs, and although we may plan to turn it on to watch the Inauguration on January 20, it is unlikely we will do so before then.  Not with so many good books to read.

Always Something New

Conditions were perfect Sunday morning for our weekly long run.  Weather conditions were good, and we both noticed that there was far less traffic on Fort Macon Road; Martha thought it might be because the Coast Guard Station is closed on Sundays.  Martha had started a little later than I did – we passed each other on the bike path – and so I was too late to see what she told me about when she returned:  a tall ship, with three masts and sails full, coming out of Beaufort harbor.  I must have just missed it.  We got out binoculars and could see it on the horizon, flanked by several smaller vessels; unfortunately the photo is not a good one.

After lunch, Martha told me about another event she discovered on the Friends of Atlantic Beach Facebook page:  A drive-through Gingerbread Festival of Lights display in nearby Newport, a fundraiser for the Crystal Coast Hospice House.  It sounded like fun, although our social schedule is becoming hectic.  Two nights in a row, out after dark!  We arrived nearly a half-hour before sunset and were glad we did as cars began backing up for what looked like a solid mile out on Highway 70.  The displays were very entertaining, and included caroling and dancing by many, many young people, an impressive brass band playing a medley of carols, and toward the end of the route, a pretty good rock band playing “Run Run Rudolph,” the Chuck Berry classic.

Today was a rest day, so we stayed in the condo this morning and Martha mixed up a batch of granola, my morning sustenance nearly every day for several years.  It does not compare at all to store-bought granola, and it has the additional benefit of filling the condo with a lovely, sweet aroma.  “I’ve never made granola while looking at the ocean before,” Martha smiled from the kitchen.

She made so much that there was enough for granola bars, too (again incomparable to store-bought), which are good for breakfast or an afternoon snack.

In the afternoon, we decided to take a short hike.  The weather forecast showed that it was 54 degrees here and 33 degrees in Highlands, and it was starting to snow there according to somebody on Facebook.  So we were glad to be able to drive the short distance to the Fort Macon Picnic Area and hike the new Atlantic Beach Connector Trail, part of the Elliott Coues Nature Trail. 

 The trail meanders first through a typical maritime forest, featuring live oak and cedar trees, and crosses a jewel of a lake

We looped back to the beginning and then walked out on part of the trail on the ocean side, which begins to climb on a path through sand dunes stabilized by Christmas trees, which are collected every year at the Park and the Picnic Area.  You can see the trees along the edges of the trail.   The trees have prevented erosion by the wind over many years, a wonderful use for these still-fragrant remnants of the holiday.

We ended up back in the parking lot.  It had been an overcast day, and it had begun to drizzle rain by then.  We walked by a man whom Martha had seen earlier, reeling up a wire from a small electronic device he had set up on a tripod next to his car.

I asked him what he was doing and he said he was part of an amateur radio club, which focuses on communicating with other enthusiasts in State parks across the country.  “What an interesting hobby!” I said.  “I’ve just started doing it,” he said. 

“There’s always something new to learn, isn’t there?” I said, and he agreed.

Nor’easters and Flotillas

I wouldn’t want readers of this blog to think that we are obsessed with the weather out here.  I do consult the forecast nearly every day, though, so that we can plan our outdoor activities around days of heavy rain or wind.  The forecast this week called for another storm carrying winds stronger than the last one, and it arrived on schedule.  Martha spoke to a woman on the walkway earlier who said, “Looks like we’re in for a nor’easter!”  So we took the furniture on the balcony in again.

I wondered if this was really a “nor’easter,” though, which I remember experiencing as a boy growing up in Connecticut, usually during the winter and often accompanied by snow.  It was too warm for any snow here, and the wind did pick up speed all day, but it was from the southwest as it had been last week.  By the time it reached New England yesterday it was producing snow, so I suppose its winds turned around in some meteorological way.  Here, it had cleared out overnight, the sky swept entirely clean, and the wind was blowing 30 mph.  I wonder if it is only a matter of time before I start measuring such a wind in knots instead of mph as a “Dingbatter” does.  Let’s just say 26 knots.

When I went down to the beach later in the morning, the surf was still high, although not as turbulent as earlier.  And see:  this blogger has finally learned how to post not just photos but videos to his blog!  I hope it plays on all the laptops and iPhones and iPads out there.

 

We wisely decided not to run in 26-knot conditions this morning (we will reschedule our long runs to tomorrow morning), so it has been a quiet afternoon.  I picked up some of that good kale salad at Blue Ocean seafood and checked out the fresh catch.

 The wind continued to die down and Martha spent some time reading a book out in the sun on the balcony, while I spent some time reading New Yorker articles and learning how to post videos to my blog.  A typical quiet Saturday afternoon, trying to avoid the news, which presses in upon our Sabbatical so forcefully.  Some 2800 people died yesterday, in a single day, of Covid-19, and it took just a little math to realize that was one every 30 seconds.  Such a heartbreaking loss. 

We haven’t gone to any events out here this year, but tonight we drove to Morehead City to watch the Crystal Coast Christmas Flotilla.  The flotilla featured boats, yachts, oars, kayaks, and commercial vessels decorated for the season, visible from the waterfront in both Morehead City and Beaufort.  They moved at a glacial pace but were quite beautiful.

The “Olde Mountain Christmas Parade” scheduled for this morning in Highlands was cancelled this year due to Covid.  But we enjoyed seeing this alternative, a parade out on the water, stately, safely-distanced, and just lovely!

Training for Something

The wind has diminished over the past three days, a little bit on each day.  Yesterday it dropped from 25 mph to 15 mph, and today it was down to 5 mph.  At the same time, the temperature has dropped, from 45 to 35 to 33 this morning, so cold that the dune-top deck was partially frozen, yet it has felt warmer each day.   The wind is spectacularly steady out here when a cold front moves in.  We both have vivid memories of running the Crystal Coast Half Marathon in March of 2018 and crossing that high Atlantic Beach bridge.  I wrote about it in my blog:

The sustained wind speed was 30 mph, with gusts up to 40 mph, the toughest winds I have faced in nearly 200 races; at one point, crossing the bridge directly into the headwind, it felt like someone was standing in front of me with a hand pushing on my chest.

It hasn't been quite that bad so far this year, but I do not doubt that it will before we leave.  It prompted me to look up the Beaufort Wind Scale (named after an Irishman, Francis Beaufort, rather than Atlantic Beach's neighboring city) which describes in ascending numbers the strength of the wind, from Calm to Hurricane.  In the Carolina brogue, they call the former "slick calm."  And they have a lot of names for Hurricanes.

According to the Beaufort scale, we were running in a Near Gale during that race.  But this morning it was very pleasant, temperatures in the mid-40s, and we both completed four miles.  I went down to the Picnic Area and completed four "Picnic Area Intervals" (see post of November 23), twice as many as last week and just a little bit faster.

That desire to improve can get a runner in a lot of trouble if he is not careful, especially an aging runner like me.  I have seen this same attitude operating in many of the runners I know, especially those who race often.  There always seems to be a deep need to run just a little bit faster, a little fit farther, a little bit harder than the last time.  Out here in the winter, encouraged by temperate weather and a flat road, it is not unusual to see measurable improvements in our running week by week.

My friend Fred, whom I have written about before in this blog, is 81 years old and still has that attitude.  Like us, he has not run a race all year due to Covid restrictions.  But like me he has been invited to participate in a number of "virtual races," and he just completed a virtual 10-K on a track on Thanksgiving Day that consisted of 25 laps around a track.  All by himself.  "Never again!" he told me when I asked him about it afterward.  I feel that same way, and yet we both miss the motivation of training for a real race, with real competition around us, jostling our elbows at the starting line.  "What have you got coming up?" we used to ask a runner we had not seen in awhile.  The answer is nothing, these days.

Last year, we ran a race nearly every month.  A couple of weeks after returning from Britain and Ireland in September, Martha ran the Senior Games in Cary.  We followed that up with races in October, November, and December, then came out here to Atlantic Beach and ran a race in January, February, and March.  That March race was the Crystal Coast 10-K and Half Marathon, on March 7, the last race either of us has run.

Two days later we left for Highlands.  We had planned to run races in every month this year, but before long the dire effects of the Covid-19 pandemic became clear, races were cancelled (including the Boston Marathon for the first time in its history), and all of the rest of our "New Normal" began to sink in.

Fred told me that he thought a lot of runners would give up running entirely without having the motivation of races in their lives.  It's true:  there is a world of difference between simply going out for a run, and going on a training run, watching speeds improve and distance grow farther.  Still, we continue to run as if we are training - why else would a man run four "Picnic Area Intervals" today while a small group of Park Rangers looked on wonderingly, shaking their heads, at this old guy pumping his arms furiously, gritting his teeth, trying to get that last one just one second faster than the last?

I am training for something in the meantime - in this "mean time" - for that glorious day when we can run a race again, safely.  For that day when this nightmare of a pandemic will be over and we can return to what we were doing nine months ago. For a new day to dawn.

First Storm

Sunday night, we experienced our first storm out here on the ocean.  It had been warm all day, almost ominously warm, and after dark we could hear thunder approaching from the southwest, bright flashes out over the ocean.  We went to bed but heard it all night, waxing and waning in strength, the rain pouring horizontally against the big bedroom windows and the sliding glass doors as if blasted from the nozzle of a fire hose.  I checked our Christmas decorations on the balcony the first thing in the morning; remarkably, they were still intact, and it looked like there was a break in the rain.  I was able to go out on the dune-top deck during this interim between waves of storm, but in a half hour's time it began once more in earnest.  I could hear the ocean crashing wildly even with the door closed.

In our sheltered valley in Highlands, we seldom feel the full force of a storm.  Our trees around the house will sway dizzily, and in the morning we will find branches littering the yard and driveway.  But out here on this narrow barrier island there is no protection at all, no matter what direction the wind and rain are coming from.  If I had not moved the balcony chairs and table inside they would have been long gone.

During a lull in the rain, I actually considered running as I had intended to.  But the weather app on my phone was lighting up with warnings:

I have run in pretty awful conditions before, but not when words like "severe" and "lightning" are in the forecast.  The last squall finally passed over us around noon, and then the wind began to rise in intensity.

This morning, the wind was even stronger and the temperature had dropped from 70 degrees to 45, with a stiff, unrelenting west wind blowing as it often does out here.  The wind chill was 38.  I checked the conditions for Highlands and saw that it was 19 there, but with the wind chill it felt like 10 degrees.  I doubt there were any runners out on this first day of December.  That is why we enjoy coming here during these months, and why we are so thankful for the generosity of Martha's aunt Lizette.  I was able to complete a comfortable three-mile run, and Martha walked three miles, in conditions that were, in Martha's words, "bracing."  Yes, bracing, that's the word for it!  

We returned to the condo with hair flying, cheeks flushed, and eyes bright, feeling more alive than when we had started out.