Winter Storm Izzy

I’m not sure when they began naming these winter storms as they do hurricanes, but I like the name Izzy for this latest one.  It’s better than naming one “Mike” or “Harry.”  I’m old-school enough to think that storms should all be given female names.  We both completed a chilly, windy long run yesterday (seven miles for me, the longest all year!), and Izzy was already making her presence felt as the wind increased and the clouds moved in.

They began posting Gale Warnings yesterday.  I would not want to be a small craft out on the road running this morning, let along out there on the raging ocean!

 

Last night they began posting Coastal Flood Warnings, and they sounded equally frightening.  In conditions like this, I am glad that our condo is a long, long way from the ocean and on the second floor.   

 

They take these very detailed warnings seriously out here.  Veteran mariners know what six- to twelve-foot seas can do to a small fishing boat. 

Looking ahead, we made a trip to the grocery store and to Friendly Market yesterday afternoon and don’t have to go out at all today.  Our condo is exposed to the northerly wind, and all night we could hear the wind whistle and howl through the door.  Now we are settled in on a Sunday morning watching the wind furiously shake the palm trees out near the swimming pool as if they were dust mops. 

 I checked the Highlands Webcam on Main Street first thing this morning and watched a time-lapse image of a Town snow plow making its way down a deserted Main Street covered in about seven inches of snow. 

We had checked in with Main Street yesterday and noticed that it was absolutely filled with vehicles.  Visitors like to flock to Highlands before a big snow, a real treat for Floridians and Atlanteans.  But they also make it difficult for crews trying to clear roads and restore power.  Many of them have huge SUV vehicles and think that because they have four-wheel-drive they are invulnerable.  In my experience, those are the ones more likely to slide off the road, and the first to call 911 when the power goes out.  Stay home, people!

We learned from Martha’s aunt Anne that Clemson received three inches, and our daughter Katy reported the same from Greenville.  That’s unusual for the Upstate area.  Anne could not remember that much snow since six years ago.  We were visiting her at the time – on the way to Atlantic Beach for the first time, actually – and I took this photo of her patio.

Now the rest of the day stretches languidly before us, a lazy Sunday watching the blowing rain as the wind slowly moves around from the northwest to the southwest, playing music, reading, perhaps even playing Scrabble while the wind howls outside.  

Stay safe, everyone! 

New Bern

Yesterday we decided to drive to New Bern, about an hour north of here on US-70 and one of our favorite places to visit.  Located where the Trent and Neuse Rivers meet, it is a city that is only a few feet above the water, and as a result it was badly damaged by Hurricane Florence in September of 2018.  Large parts of the downtown area were flooded, and we witnessed extensive damage when we visited there only a few months later. 

It rained as never before in this city by the ocean,
Out where there is no high ground at all; none.
An outstretched hand remembers, waist high.

It has fully recovered now, and it was a lovely day for walking, temperatures in the 50s and bright blue skies.  New Bern was founded in 1710 by a group of settlers from Bern, Switzerland, which was a city named after the first animal a group of hunters first came upon, a bear.  The city has adopted the animal as a mascot and placed many fiberglass, ceramic bears throughout the city during its 300th anniversary in 2010.  They are literally everywhere.

It is also famous for Tryon Palace, formerly known as the Governor’s Palace, which was the official residence and administrative headquarters of the British governors in North Carolina before the revolution.  Shortly after the state capital was relocated to Raleigh in 1792, the main building burned to the ground. A modern re-creation faithful to the original architect's plans, including the gardens, was built on the site in the 1950s, and we have visited many times.   

New Bern is also known as the Birthplace of Pepsi-Cola, and a small building in the historic area is the actual site where Pepsi-Cola was first invented by pharmacist Caleb Bradham (“Brad’s Drink”)  in 1898. But the historic area also contains a good many shops and restaurants, walkable brick-paved sidewalks, and the historic and very beautiful Gothic-Revival-style Christ Church, ca. 1871.  It was closed today, but I toured it under the supervision of a very friendly docent a few years ago and learned that among its prized possessions is a five-piece communion service, the gift of George II, which is still used to this day.

One of our frequent stops here is Morgan’s Tavern & Grill, located in a roomy, wonderful building, formerly a garage, with lots of little private alcoves; it also featured outdoor dining, which we especially like in these Covid days.  We had the patio to ourselves and enjoyed fresh tacos (shrimp for Martha, seared tuna for me) and a cup of their famous lobster and crab bisque.

Next door is Mitchell’s Hardware, which has been in operation since 1898.  It is a real hardware store, with wooden floors, shelves of nuts and bolts, plumbing fixtures and the like, and it is always a treat to come in the front door and step back in time.

After lunch, I wandered through the Antique Mall across the way, and then made my way to the North Carolina History Center, which also serves as the headquarters for Tryon Palace tickets and information.  The History Center itself is one of the finest I have seen, well-designed and containing good exhibits.  I spent an hour or more there while Martha was visiting shops downtown, but could have spent the entire afternoon.  The exhibits are extensive, and cover everything from the environment of the central coast area and how it was settled to the production of naval stores (turpentine, rosin, and tar) and the resulting destruction of the Long Leaf Pine forests, fishing, and agriculture.  It does not shy away from the history of slavery, “the peculiar institution.”  I was especially struck by the display of an advertisement for a slave auction, as well as one offering a reward for the capture of an escaped slave.  I hope Blackledge never got his man back.

Leaving the History Center, I walked along Metcalf Street and around the corner to Tryon Palace, following the perimeter of its brick walls.  There was almost nobody out and about, and I enjoyed looking at the historic homes along the way.

I had the Palace to myself, and walked all through the grounds, taking a photo of the picturesque dovecote on the way, and then descended through the formal gardens and around the back.

 

 

 

 

January is not the best time of year for touring gardens, but, surprisingly, there were still flowers blooming here and there because it has been so mild.  These narcissus nodded shyly along the path.

When I came to the vegetable gardens, there were even more plants still growing, mostly cabbages, and two gardeners were at work with trowels cultivating them.  I spoke to one of them, a friendly man with a beard wearing overalls who looked a little like I did about 40 or 50 years ago.  “You’ve still got things growing!” I said.  “Oh yes, still a lot of work to do,” he replied.  “I’m from Western North Carolina and they’re calling for a foot of snow this weekend.  We have nothing blooming there!”  He told me that there was a chance of snow or freezing rain here in New Bern, as well, although it looks from the forecast today that it will mostly avoid us.

Martha had arranged to meet me in the gift shop at the History Center after I walked back, and she was there.  I realized that it was already past 3:00 p.m. – time flies, when you have no watch! – and we started back toward Atlantic Beach.

Bath House Intervals

In contrast to Sunday’s 62-degree shorts-and-T-shirt run, Monday morning dawned windy and cloudy and twenty degrees colder.  But these conditions seemed better than those forecast for Tuesday, so I decided to complete a three-mile run, to the “Bath House” and then back on the beach.  What a glorious place to run, this wide flat beach!  It was exactly low tide, and the north wind was blowing offshore, softening the crash of surf, the great wide flashing ocean on my left elbow just a few feet away.  There was almost nobody else out there, but I did pass one well-bundled woman gathering shells, and I noticed as I approached that she was wearing a face-mask!  Really?  I steered a wide berth around this overly-cautious woman.

It’s not all about the running, I told Martha recently, but it’s a big part of the reason we come out here in January, to be able not only to maintain our fitness as runners but also to improve it by adding distance and speed that would be difficult to accomplish in Highlands.  We have been able to run three or even four days a week, and on the alternate days I have developed a challenging weight program using only two 25-pounds dumbbells.  Martha completes an equally challenging fitness routine in front of the DVD player that she has been doing for several years now, skipping it only on long-run days.

Today I repeated Monday’s run, except that I included two “Bath House Intervals,” my first intervals in several months.  Interval training is a classic way to increase speed when preparing for a race, and this is an especially good place to run them, a long flat paved stretch in the big parking lot there where there is little traffic instead of out on the bicycle path.  I run them from the “Yield” sign at one end to the trash can at the other, somewhere between an eighth and a quarter of a mile.  (Since I run them in the same location every year, the exact distance is not important.)  I clocked a 1:09 on the first one and a 1:08 on the second, and was pretty pleased with myself, remembering that last year I got closer and closer to 1:00, and by the end of our stay here had dropped a second or two below that.  It is satisfying to feel that fatigue in the legs, and I definitely felt it when returning on the beach.  

I always wear my Garmin Forerunner watch when running, which has caused me to be chided by some of my non-watch-wearing running friends.  Rather than constraining me, it gives me a feeling of freedom as I simply hit Start and then let it tell me how far I have run.  Like many runners, I am a little obsessed with statistics, and I have recorded my mileage for every run, every week, and every year since 1995.  My cumulative total on New Year’s Day was 31,973 miles, farther than the circumference of the earth!  Like the fatigue in the legs after a hard workout that number is satisfying to think about. 

My other watch, the one I wear daily, is a vintage Timex Ironman Triathlon, which preceded the Garmin.  It did not tell me how far I ran, but it’s easy-to-use stopwatch function told me how fast I ran.  These days I still use it when I am boiling pasta noodles or baking something in the oven, even though our oven at home and here both have built-in timers.  It also tells me what time of day it is, an increasingly irrelevant thing to know as we settle into the easy routine of our Sabbatical.  As if in confirmation of that irrelevance I put it on today and found that its face was blank, its battery depleted.

My Garmin stays plugged in 24/7 waiting for the next run, and it seems almost like an insult to use it for the commonplace function of telling me what time of day it is.  So I have been going about watch-less when I am not running, glancing from time to time at my naked wrist, which tells me it is a hair past a freckle.  And, oh yes, the clouds in the western sky are beginning to turn orange and red and purple, and so I know exactly what time it is again, as the sun sets on another good day.

Glad to Be Here

I was glad that we had decided to postpone our long run until today, because it was 53 degrees when I awoke and 62 degrees when we started running.  Conditions were just perfect for shorts and a T-shirt.

We are in a perfect location for running, east of the Atlantic Beach causeway and about two-and-a-half miles from Fort Macon, the second most visited State Park in the country and one with which we are very familiar.  Hiking trails connect the so-called Bath House, about a mile from here, to the main Fort, and when I want a short run or when I’m doing interval training, it makes a good three- or four-mile run to go only that far, perhaps running back on the beach if the tide is out.  There are restrooms there and also at the Fort, and today I ran straight out to the Fort, circling the parking lot for just under three miles, making a nice six-mile run when I returned.

Once you pass the sign, there are bicycle paths on both sides of the road, which makes for good running.  We know where all the landmarks are, too.  Here is the sign marking the place where Union Artillery shelled the Fort in 1862, forcing the few Confederate soldiers defending the Fort to surrender.  It marks the half-way point.

Just before you reach the Fort, there is a Coast Guard station on the sound side, and there are often big cutters anchored there.  We have both noticed when running past here before the aroma of fresh donuts, but I detected nothing this morning.  I took this photo hastily from the car window later; I thought if I were observed, someone might try to seize my phone.

Just a few yards past that there is a sign marking the location of the ruins of Queen Anne’s Revenge, the ship of the pirate Blackbeard which was abandoned about a mile-and-a-half offshore in 1718.  The shipwreck was discovered in 1996, and some of the relics are on display at the N. C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

This entire coastline has a fascinating history, and there are often programs at the Fort and at area museums that we have attended over the years.  I will describe the Fort itself on another day; today I was focused solely on my six-mile run, and this fence marks the final bend before reaching my destination, a row of cannons mounted on the hill above.

I noticed as I approached the fort that an SUV was driving by with a Christmas tree tied on its roof, a sight we often see in Highlands before Christmas.  I knew where this man was heading – to deposit his Christmas tree with a couple hundred others by the parking lot at the Fort, where they are collected and distributed out on the dunes to help stabilize the sand.  I stopped in front of the big pile of trees and simply stood there for a minute, inhaling the fragrance.

I discovered when I returned to the condo that Martha had also had a good run, five miles, returning on the beach at just-past low tide.  So we celebrated by eating lunch at a restaurant in Morehead City that had been recommended to us, Off the Hook, and we were able to eat outside (which we prefer these days) in mid-60s sunshine.  Our waitress was Jenna, she was very poised, and she also had a lot of tattoos.  Martha asked her what one of them on her arm said, and she gladly told us – the last part of an Audrey Hepburn quote that I looked up when I returned to the condo:  “For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.”

After lunch, we drove out to Harkers Island and visited the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center, one of our favorite places.  

Out front was a "crab pot Christmas tree," popular in these parts, because those balsam trees piled up at Fort Macon came from a long way off, but crab pots are local.

It was warm enough that some of these little critters were out, basking in sun, on this perhaps warmest day for a few weeks.

And then we walked on some of the paths in the maritime forest near the museum, around to the Willow Pond and back again.

“You know,” I told Martha while we were walking, “Days like this one are the reason we come out here during the winter,” and she agreed.   

Gale warnings are out again for tonight, and later we would move the deck furniture inside for the night.  But this afternoon, now, walking in dappled sunlight on the shady Willow Pond path, we were glad to be here.

Remembering January 6

We had planned to run this morning – a Saturday long run is a tradition, the day of the week adjusted only by travel or adverse conditions – but yesterday the wind started to pick up and temperatures to plummet.  (Tomorrow, the forecast temperature is 70 degrees.)  We tried to walk on the beach for a little while but it was a cold and biting northwest wind.   

A flock of seagulls had been following a vehicle that was slowly driving on the beach – they permit 4X4s on the beach during the winter, and they often park to watch the sunset – and the driver must have been feeding them.  When we approached, they rose into the air as one and circled around chaotically, thinking we might have come to feed them, too.  The wind was so strong that some of them were suspended motionless in the air like kites.

We were inside and had gotten “comfortable” – Martha’s aunt Anne calls it “getting fluffy” – when I realized it was only five minutes until sunset.  So I rushed out to the dune-top deck and took this photo. And then I rushed back inside, very quickly.

The sunsets are almost as spectacular as the sunrises, and visible from the same vantage point, east-south-east and west-south west, and the light lingers for a long time.  I could still see a faint purple glow out over the ocean 45 minutes later.

I have let January 6 come and go and avoided saying anything about the violent insurrection at the Capitol a year ago.  We were out here, and like Kennedy’s assassination or the twin towers falling, we remember exactly where we were when I began hearing coverage on NPR.  We rushed back to the condo and broke our rule about watching television and watched it all unfold.  What a terrible day for our country and for democracy, but not an unexpected one – it was the final inevitable chapter in surely the worst presidency ever.  And it is still not over as we see most of the Republican Party destroyed, the integrity of statesmen like John McCain replaced by a pure lust for power. It is hard to believe that one year has passed, and although some of the insurgents themselves have been jailed, there has been no accountability at all for those who directed the failed coup that came so close to destroying our country.

Although we are on Sabbatical, and spend a lot of time reading and watching the sunrise and watching gulls float by, we do watch the news.  I am hopeful that the House January 6 Committee will bring it all to light, and I was cheered by Joe Biden’s speech commemorating the day and calling out “the former guy.” 

Adulation of said former guy persists in this part of the country.  There is a small, run-down house on the road to Lowes Food which we noticed last year.  It is surrounded by a chain-link fence, and into the fence the owner has jammed red plastic cups that spell out TRUMP in four-foot high letters.  (Why is there even a fence around this house?  To keep out Lib Dems?)  It is both ridiculous and ominous, as was the former guy.  And even the gale-force winds that regularly visit this coast have not dislodged the little cups from the fence.  

If there ever was a time – and I grew up in the era of the Vietnam War and Watergate – now is the time to speak truth to lies.  As Bob Dylan said so prophetically 50 years ago:

There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late.

An Easy Rhythm

It seems as if all I write about in this blog is the sunrise, but watching this ordinary daily occurrence sets the tone for the rest of the day – Emily Dickinson would say, “It’s all a common glory.” 

I noticed that someone had left a pair of shoes – a child’s shoes, by the size of them – next to the walkway, and I wonder how long they will stay there.  Martha takes her shoes off sometimes on warm days and parks them in that same place, blurry dimples of soft sand behind her where she has walked, and then closer to the water the clean outlines of her bare feet, heel and toes.  Her soles are tougher than mine; I always find myself thrown into a limp by crunching on a sharp shell, so I wear my running shoes or my hiking boots.  But I have decided I will let someone else remove these little shoes, perhaps not missed until the owner was halfway to wherever they came from.

We have fallen into an easy rhythm of sunrise and sunset and low tide and high, and it has been warm enough for three days in a row to eat lunch out on the balcony – shrimp burgers two days in a row, and tuna quesadillas today, and cold beer.  Our own little bistro table with the best view.

We do eat well, finding exactly what we need in the three grocery stores out here, especially Lowes Foods, which seems to have the freshest fruits and vegetables.  And in addition to Blue Ocean seafood, there is take-out from Friendly Market, a place on which we have relied for good, healthy food for several years now.

Owners Matt and Mindy Fitzpatrick started the market on a vacant lot on the corner of Bridges Street and Friendly Street (thus its name) and turned it into a 6000 square foot building with healthy food packaged to go, local produce when in season, and a good selection of beer and wine.  They opened a nursery a few years ago, and last year even sold Christmas trees.  Their pasta salad and cheese-and-tomato dip are staples, and this year they have begun to offer “Lighten Up 22” dinners to go.  So Chicken Bruschetta was dinner last night and will be again tonight (their dinners for two are so bountiful they turn into dinners for four).

In three days time, I have gotten caught up with my New Yorkers, and will begin on a book tonight.  Martha is reading Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, and I may start Anthony Doerr’s Four Seasons in Rome.  Martha reads more books than I do during the course of a year, and interesting ones, but I stay occupied with the New Yorker much of the time.  Out here, though, I read more in two months time than in ten months time in Highlands.  Perhaps I need to rearrange my free time in Highlands.

I brought my keyboard with me, too, not as good as a piano, but good enough to allow me to practice my handful of pieces of music and perhaps learn another.  

Good food, good books, good companionship, and a piano – what more could a person want on a Sabbatical?

Wasting Time

I am always surprised at how quickly the weather changes out here, from day to day, from hour to hour.  This morning the temperature was 64 degrees, and the north wind had turned around overnight and was coming from the south.  The sunrise was again partially blocked by clouds but gorgeous just the same.

It was so warm and mild that after breakfast I returned to the dune-top deck and sat watching the clouds on the southern horizon, which were changing from minute to minute.  You can see the weather coming from a long way off out here, especially when it is approaching from over the ocean.  I could see dark vertical bands of rain under a turbulent line of clouds, black drapes dangling down onto the water below, and a bright blue window suddenly opening above, as if a sash had been pushed up.

Out there in the morning sky a long line of birds was flying from east to west in front of the pinks and purples in the sky.

I didn’t need Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds to tell me that these were eastern brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis), looking for breakfast in the ocean below.  They were all flying in the same direction, and I wondered how they returned to the east.  You could see their characteristic bills when some of them turned inland and flew overhead.

How glorious, to sit and listen to the ocean, to watch the clouds coming in, and to watch these pelicans floating by, sometimes soaring on unmoving wings.

I realized after a time that I had spent an hour out on the dune-top deck, simply watching and listening.  What a glorious waste of time.  Beach time.  It reminded me of Mary Oliver’s poem, The Summer Day, except that I was here surrounded by sand dunes instead of grassy fields.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?