Great First Month of the Project

I have continued to consult with interest the Carteret County Shore Protection Office website for updates on the beach nourishment project, now alarmingly close to the condo.  Yesterday’s update indicated the project is now about one-third completed.  381,324 cubic yards have been dredged, from areas farther out on the ocean when weather permits, or in the inlet as we saw on Wednesday.  “The fill density on the beach is close to 80 cubic yards/linear foot,” the CCSPO congratulated itself.  “Great first month of the project!”

While I am amazed as the technological feat of this project and awed at the bulldozers hard at work on the beach, it is definitely having some negative impacts for us.  For one thing, the crews are working long hours.  Last night I kept awaking during the night and hearing them still at work, with bright lights shining and the loud beep beep beep every time one of them backed up.  At 4:00 a.m. I dug out some earplugs.  This morning, I went down to the dune-top deck and discovered that the big mushrooming plume was right outside the condo, bulldozers pushing it out into the surf itself.

 I walked down the beach in the opposite direction, toward the Oceanana Pier, and found the beach littered with an unusual amount of weird debris.

It made me wonder if all of this was being carried through the pipeline from Beaufort Inlet.  It also made me wonder, not for the first time, if the main objective of the project was the dredging portion rather than the beach “nourishment” portion, and this formerly pristine beach was merely a convenient place to dump all the dredged sand.  It had seemed wide and flat and well-nourished enough before the project  began.  A few puzzled gulls were waddling along, wondering what kind of marine life had been washed up.

Someone had built a remarkably ambitious sandcastle just down the beach a little way.  Most of it remained, its turrets topped with shells and a big whelk screwed down onto a platform, although its ramparts were already succumbing to the incoming tide.  But the contractors for this fragile, ephemeral little structure had already knocked off for the day, and there was nobody else on the beach but me, collar pulled up against the stiff breeze, hands shoved deep in my pockets.

Exciting Dinners

We have a joke between us.  “I’m cooking tonight; shall I disconnect the smoke alarm?” I will ask.  The smoke alarm in question is five feet from the kitchen, and sometimes it begins its insistent beep at the slightest provocation, like a few weeks ago while Martha doing nothing more than getting a good sear on some sautéed scallops.  Opening the front door and the balcony door will make it stop quickly enough, that cool north wind flooding in.  It adds some excitement to cooking dinner.  I took a turn at cooking one day last month and actually made it go off twice – a two-alarm dinner!

Tuesday night, it was Martha’s turn, and she prepared panko-and-parmesan encrusted flounder, roasted carrots, and couscous (delicious!).  The smoke alarm did not go off, but when it was almost time to plate.  I went out on the balcony and heard some sirens somewhere in the distance.  We sat down to dinner, but we heard the sounds of loud engines out front, so I went out to investigate  There were two fire trucks parked just outside, lights flashing.  Our concerns were dispelled when I leaned over the railing and asked one of the firemen if everything was OK.  “An alarm went off and we’re just checking it,” he said.  That was even more exciting than a two-alarm dinner!  

A peculiar and unsettling incident occurred yesterday.  Just as we were preparing to leave for an afternoon hike at Fort Macon - emerging from our burrow, as it were - Martha noticed a helicopter out over the ocean.  “Look,” she said, “It’s just hovering in the same place!”  While we watched through our binoculars, a figure descended on a line from the helicopter toward the surface.  There was a small fishing boat a hundred feet away.  Had somebody fallen overboard in a life jacket?  The figure ascended, then descended again.  Perhaps it was just a drill, a training exercise for the Coast Guard for rescues at sea, and we hope so.  The wind was blowing pretty hard and that ocean looked cold enough for hypothermia to set in quickly.  I took a photo of the distant helicopter but it was not a good one.  Sometimes I wish my little iPhone was equipped with a telephoto lens.

We had a good hike, taking the salt marsh portion of the Elliott Coues Nature Trail where we were sheltered from the wind.  On our return to the fort, we found that the J. S. Chatry was out in the inlet, just opposite the parking lot.  Tugboats were nudging it into place, and there were long floating pipelines connecting to the beach. 

It still amazes me that silt can be pumped such a distance.  The project at our end is now clearly visible from the balcony – in a day or two they will be past the condo, heading toward The Circle, a mile-and-a-half away.  I measured the distance from where we saw the dredge to the condo using Google Maps, and the distance is at least two-and-a-half miles.

I offered to cook again tonight, a new recipe.  It will involve nothing smokier than sautéing some onions and garlic.  Still, I am wondering . . . should I turn off the smoke alarm?

P. S.  I should have turned off the smoke alarm.  Although my white bean, tomato, and shrimp soup was well-received, I set off the smoke alarm three times. A new record!

Groundhog Day

There was bad news this morning for those who believe that a small rodent in Pennsylvania has the ability to predict the severity of the rest of the winter.  Yes, the state’s most famous resident, Punxsutawney Phil, reportedly emerged from his burrow  this snowy Tuesday morning and saw his shadow, which for some reason frightened him back into his burrow, resulting in six more weeks of winter.  

 “Of course there will be six more weeks of winter!” I told myself when I heard this news.  “Especially in Highlands!  It’s only February 2!”  I well remember that our worse blizzard, “The Storm of the Century,” arrived on March 13, 1993.

It was cloudy here this morning, so local Atlantic Beach groundhogs (if any) may have been able to emerge from their burrows and poked their noses unafraid into the stiff north wind, which in turn may have sent them back again, as it did me after my very expeditious walk out onto the dune-top deck for my morning Tai Chi.  From that perch, I could see the lights of three bulldozers working out on the beach as part of the dredging and beach nourishment project that I have written about.  They were very close, and although that north wind carried the sound out to sea this morning, we have been hearing the loud beeping as they back, and push, and back again the dark dredged sand coming out of the end of that long pipeline.  They are already working at 7:00 a.m., and in the evenings we can hear them well after dark, the area where they are working lit by bright lights.  It made me wonder if they work through the night.  Once it starts flowing through the pipeline, can they simply turn it off, like a faucet, and expect it not to come to a halt under the ocean into a stubborn immovable ball of dense silt?

I checked the informative website and found no answer to this question, but I did find that the bulldozers are continuing to make “Nice Progress:”

Weeks Marine and their pipeline dredge, the J. S. Chatry, has made some nice progress the past several days as they continue to address shoaling in Range A of the Harbor during this period of calm seas (despite being accompanied by a near constant mist or rain).  In terms of the concurrent beach nourishment activity, the discharge is located near the Southwinds/A Place at the Beach condominiums area.  Roughly 3,386 linear feet completed; 10,475 linear feet remaining.

I am surprised this $18 million project is still underway in the face of the nation’s grave economic crisis.  It can only be continuing because it was approved long before the Covid-19 pandemic and contracts already awarded.  But the reality is that we will no longer be able to run on the beach at low tide, or walk on the beach as Martha did on Saturday when she collected this bountiful plateful of shells.

But the beach is a living thing, and time and tide will spread out new sand, and wash in new shells, long after we are gone. 

Hallwalking and Other Pastimes

The possibility of snow on Thursday morning was exciting to anticipate, but it never materialized here.  I understand from talking to Martha’s aunt Lizette in Raleigh that it did snow there, however, and was quite lovely, especially for some of the residents in her retirement home who were Florida transplants.  Instead of snow, we braced for more wind, less in the “15 to 25 mph range” and more in the “gusts up to 35 mph” range.  It blew hard all day Thursday and Friday, and was still so strong on Saturday that I waited until that afternoon before completing my six-mile long run to Fort Macon and back.

When the wind blows from the north out here, it can be quite deceptive.  The south-facing balcony will often be sunny enough to persuade you that you could sit out in a chair for awhile, but stepping out into the stairwell dispels that notion immediately.  Sometimes when we dash from the stairwell and slide gratefully into our car parked under the building it is difficult to pull the door closed.  But by Saturday afternoon it had subsided to five mph or so and temperatures in the low 40s felt balmy. 

The subsiding wind and slightly warmer temperatures ushered in a day of rain on Sunday.  Another rainy day at the beach.  Fortunately, we can always find useful pastimes to while away the hours until we can get outside again.

That tall stack of books we brought with us has dwindled, but there is always something to read, and that is how we have been spending the evenings.  Is there a better pastime than reading?  We have unfortunately fallen into a routine of watching the news late every afternoon before replacing it with dinner music.  It is difficult not to be riveted to the continuing drama unfolding every day, mostly the progress of the ambitious Covid Relief Bill proposed by the Biden Administration.  It is nice to return to daily press briefings, and we are impressed with the competent and articulate Jen Psaki and all the other members of Team Biden. 

And then there is the Republican Party, that seems to be in the process of destroying itself and not doing much about it.  Ronald Reagan has been replaced with Marjorie Taylor Greene and her Jewish space lasers – it is unbelievable that she has not yet been expelled.  David Brooks said on PBS this weekend that the party was on fire, and it reminded me of the time years ago when we were in a grocery store in Clayton, Georgia, and heard an employee say over the public address system, “Will the owner of a white Chevrolet come to the front of the store?  Your car is on fire,” and then repeating it with increasing alarm until she finally said, in exasperation, “Please come to the front!  Your car is on fire!!  With flames!!!”  She pronounced it with a broad Georgia accent:  fl-eye-mes!  Republicans, your party is on fire!  With flames!!

Another pastime I have been enjoying is playing my keyboard, which I found providentially in our local thrift store Mountain Findings in Highlands this fall.  It is not at all the same as a piano, but it at least allows me to practice the handful of Bach pieces that I have committed to memory from time to time.  Last year I had gotten so rusty that I nearly forgot part of one of the minuets.

I knew this little minuet from memory, years ago –
Nothing much, only one sharp – but I owned it,
And played it often, marveling at Father Bach
And his lovely symmetries, like a butterfly’s wings

Spread out treble and clef on the page before me.
And then I forgot it, over time, from want of practice
And the business of days gone by, wasted hours.
Now it is coming back to me, bar by bar,

Fingers remembering the familiar harmonies,
The difficult little arpeggios.  In time, I will
Remember it all, and have no need of the page,
As I remember all the forgotten pieces of my life.

I am learning a new minuet on this Sabbatical – because we should not stop learning new things, should we? – picking out the notes slowly like a young child who is just learning to read and has to sound out the words.  I can read music just a little, and often regret that I never continued taking piano lessons from my piano teaching Dad when I was a teenager more inclined to ride my bicycle or read a book than “practice.”

My laptop has not had any sound all month - see post of January 2, wherein I describe my failed attempt to uninstall and reinstall its sound driver to improve the sound quality (the uninstalling worked fine, but the reinstalling did not).  But happily I have now managed to restore it and am enjoying listening to music again with the new earphones that Martha gave me for Christmas.  There are some wonderful recordings now on YouTube by the Netherlands Bach Society.  Is there a better pastime than playing and listening to music?

And when it continues to rain all day, as it did on Sunday, there is always hallwalking.  Martha has done a little of this too.  When the wind is from the south, the hallways of the condo building are sheltered.  I walked down to the first floor, and then the entire length of the hallway, turned the corner to the end, and back again, then climbed rapidly to the second floor and did the same, etc., up to the fifth floor.  Then I came back down again, floor by floor.  Although I had my facemask in my pocket, I did not pass a soul.  I noticed that every unit had a different kind of mat at the front door, most of them nautically themed.  But despite the dozen or so cars parked under the building on this rainy Sunday afternoon, I saw no signs of habitation inside any of the units, not even lights on.  I suppose these winter residents were napping, or in their living rooms watching sports on TV.  Or maybe listening to music or reading.  Or writing in their blogs!

Highlands Hallwalker, waiting for the rain to stop.

Not Right in the Head

How many times have I posted a screen shot of the Weather Radar App on my phone showing green, yellow, orange, and red shapes approaching?  That is approximately how many times I have suffered an acute attack of Not Right in the Head syndrome, the phrase that Martha uses when I behave in a less than prudent manner. 

The syndrome is not limited exclusively to rain.  Sometimes I have run in strong gales, and snow, and stinging hail, and yes, Martha has done so, too (although the NRITH acronym seems to be reserved for me).  Martha well remembers that pitiful selfie I took of the two of us huddling in the car, soaked and shivering, after the Flying Pirate Half Marathon which we ran entirely in the rain one year.  (I can’t seem to find it on my computer.)  We’ve had a lot of fun throughout our running careers.  It reminds me of the motto of the U. S. Postal Service:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor being right in the head
Stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed runs.

Or something like that.

Rain threatened yesterday morning, although there was not quite as much green on the radar.  I started out in a light drizzle that quickly disappeared, and although the sky remained an angry gray, I was able to complete a nice three-mile run, ending with a fast mile.  An hour after I returned it began raining.  Runner’s luck, to find that window of opportunity, to seize the opportunity, and return from the battle unscathed! That is always a satisfying feeling.

But runner’s luck works the other way sometimes, the dice tumbles upside down.  This morning I started out in a light drizzle that quickly turned into a gradually intensifying rain.  I turned at the Picnic Area, dodging the deeper puddles, and on the way back I kept telling myself, “I’ve run in worse conditions than this!”  I was remembering that Flying Pirate with Martha, and the full marathon I ran in Huntsville one year mostly in the rain, and that other drenched-to-the-skin marathon at the Outer Banks, where I vividly remember one young woman who appeared to be five or six months pregnant laughing and going out of her way to wade through the deeper puddles.  After a while your shoes are soaking wet and weigh ten pounds each, and dodging puddles just.  Doesn’t. Matter.

I suppose that’s one reason we complete those “character-building” rain-soaked runs, and those 90-degree runs in 99% humidity with not a breath of wind, and those runs into wind so strong you have to turn and run a few steps backwards just to feel it relent a little.  It was not that bad this morning as rainy runs go, but I was still glad to return to the condo and exchange my soaking shirt for a dry one.  “I know, Not Right in the Head,” I admitted as I opened the door. 

The reason I ran twice in two days, and once in the rain, was that I looked ahead at the forecast for tomorrow morning and it looks like one of those even more character-building runs, and not only that, one of those runs that just don’t accomplish anything else.  The Weather App for the entire morning showed those amusing little red-and-white wind socks clinging to a bending flagpole that indicate gale-force winds:

And the forecast calls for snow, which we have never seen out here except one very light dusting one year.  

It would be nice to watch snowflakes fall!  And to be inside having a cup of Friendly Market shrimp and corn chowder for lunch, diagnosed with a rare case of Uncharacteristically Right in the Head.

Dredging and Nourishment (Part III)

We have been wondering about the wall of dark dredged material slowly advancing toward us on the beach.  You can stand out on the beach and see the dark mounds and hear the bulldozers spreading it out.  Last week, we walked down to the Fort Macon Picnic Area on the beach to investigate, and although the area was closed off with webbed orange construction fencing, I was able take this video of the dredged sand mushrooming upward from the end of the pipeline.

We noticed yesterday that there was a new ship on the horizon, and through our binoculars it appeared to be the J. S. Chatrey, no longer in Beaufort Inlet but out on the open ocean.  The Carteret County Shore Protection Office’s website was illuminating.  After taking safe refuge in the harbor due to the weather (i.e., the near-gale force winds I had run in on Monday and Wednesday, when a practical runner would have been in his own safe refuge), the dredge had indeed been moved to what looks like the open ocean but is still the outer part of the inlet.  The wind had died down and the sun was out, so we drove down to the Fort yesterday and approached the Picnic Area from the other end.

The pipeline was still stretched out on that part of the beach much to the curiosity of beach-goers. 

Sand bridges had been created all along it so that fishermen and shell-gatherers could climb over the pipe, which would otherwise have been a formidable barrier.

We saw that a new pipeline had been extended underwater from the J. S. Chatrey to the beach, its location marked with buoys.  Where it came onto the beach, it turned at a sharp 90-degree angle and continued down toward the Picnic Area, where we could see bulldozers at work on this Sunday afternoon.  I wondered what would happen if the pipeline became disconnected underwater.  And I wondered again how sand could be pumped through such a pipeline, then make such a sharply-angled turn.  

When I went to take these close-up photos, I realized that I could hear the dredged sand moving through the pipeline.  I had expected it to sound sort of like concrete coming down a discharge chute, but instead I could hear a steady pinging sound, like rain on a tin roof.  I took this video to record the sound, which readers of this blog who are not yet completely bored with this subject might be able to hear.

At the Picnic Area, we stopped to use the restrooms, and outside on the platform a man approached me and asked, “Do you know what’s going on?  With that pipe on the beach?”  Ha!  He had asked the right person!  I then proceeded to enthusiastically explain the details of the $18 million Morehead City Harbor Dredging & Concurrent Beach Nourishment Project, and he seemed to be reasonably interested.  It reminded me a little of what someone had once said about Ronald Reagan:  if you asked him the time, he would tell you how to make a watch.  “You can hear it being pumped through the pipe,” I said, and it looked like he was going to go down on the beach and investigate.

From the Picnic Area, we walked back on the beach-side portion of the Elliott Coues nature trail.  Christmas trees which had been placed at the Fort in a big pile (which we always stop beside so we can breathe deeply that fragrance of Frasier Fir) had been moved back to the parking lot here so they could be placed along the trail, where you can see them in various states of decomposition all along the way, some still bright green and some bare, but all of them keeping the sand from blowing away in these strong winds out here.

Earlier, when we had been walking on the beach near Fort Macon, we found this bare Christmas tree which had apparently become dislodged from the sand somewhere and which someone had planted down by the edge of the surf and decorated with shells.

Toward the end of the trail, we went to look at the newest installation at Fort Macon, acquired last year and an object of great pride for all of the historians out here.  It is a Model 1917 155 mm GPF Cannon, according to an informative and greatly detailed sign mounted alongside it, which was used throughout WWII.  One like this had likely been used during the war by mobile Coast Artillery battalions at small harbors and strategic points like Beaufort Inlet to defend against enemy naval vessels, mostly German submarines. 

The gun weights 26,000 pounds and used high explosive armor-piercing shells, with a range of 11 miles, at four rounds per minute.  Quite an improvement over the "32-pounder" Civil War-era cannons up on the ramparts, although even they had a range of five miles.

Like the old cannons facing Beaufort Inlet, and the Coast Guard station that backs up to it on the other side, it was a reminder that this beautiful State Park, with its well-maintained trails teeming with marsh rabbits and ibises and herons, its beaches dotted with shells (not the armor-piercing kind) which we enjoy nearly every day when we go running or hiking, would not be here but for warfare.

The Thing with Feathers

Hope.  That was the word I wrote on our blackboard last night after watching the ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial remembering the 400,000 who have died of Covid-19.  We watched the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris yesterday for most of the day, concluding with the wonderful “Celebrating America” prime time special.  It was all very moving, even the brass band music and all of the pomp and ceremony and decorum of this moment in our democracy.  It pointed forward to a return to normalcy after four years of willful breaking of our national norms.  

Exactly four years ago today, on January 21, 2017, Martha and I drove to New Bern to take place in a peaceful Women’s March (there were sister marches all around the country on that day) in opposition to the inauguration of our now-ex-President (whose name I will not use lest I profane this blog).  We listened to speeches by local Democratic Party officials, the NAACP, and the Christian Community Network.  And then we marched peacefully for a mile or so on quiet sidewalks under leafless winter trees.

I wrote this in my blog at the time:

"I feel that this is a profound moment in our history when good people must stand up and speak out against this President and all that he represents - the very worst representation of our nation, in my opinion - and the regressive policies he has already started to implement.  Martha, too, has become increasingly dismayed at all of the lies and distortions, the bigotry and baseness of this campaign and its eventual "winner," the treatment of women.  I know the election is over, but the fight for human rights and for the progress of the last 50 years, which many of my generation have taken for granted, will never be over.  Good people standing up and speaking out."

We knew that the next four years would be a journey in the wrong direction for our country, but we never expected how terribly low we would all be brought, culminating in the insurrection at the Capitol two weeks ago - the long downward arc of what will surely be remembered as the worst presidency in our nation’s history.  From what I saw yesterday, we are poised on the brink of a new era as, day after day, decisions are being made, cabinet officials are being appointed, and competent leadership is being brought to bear on the problems that we face.    

In the midst of the day-long ceremonies yesterday, I somehow did not realize that the “Celebrating America” event was scheduled for 7:00 p.m. last night.  But we watched it this morning and thoroughly enjoyed it, and especially the performances by what seemed to be the widest variety of musical guests possible, from Tim McGraw to Bruce Springsteen to John Legend.  Surely even the bitterest disappointed Republican voter could have had some grudging appreciation for at least one of them.  And Tom Hanks on top of everyone else, America’s favorite actor!  I especially liked the lyrics in Springsteen’s Land of Hopes and Dreams. 

Leave behind your sorrows,
Let this day be the last.
Tomorrow there'll be sunshine
And all this darkness past.
Big wheels roll through fields
Where sunlight streams.
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

I’m not naïve enough to believe that everyone is going to get on that train.  This morning we learned that 200 self-described anarchists marched in Portland, Oregon last night and smashed windows at Democratic Party headquarters.  Some of the demonstrators carried a sign that read “We don’t want Biden, we want revenge!”  That is in stark contrast to some of the signs we saw in New Bern four years ago.

Still, I wrote Hope on the blackboard last night, and it feels a little like a holiday today, like awaking from a nightmare and finding yourself at the beginning of a brand new day.  Emily Dickinson wrote about hope:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.

So I went out onto the dune-top deck this morning on another mild but very windy day - a wind so strong that it nearly unbalanced me, but did not – and I watched with hope another miraculous sunrise.