First Run at the Beach

Between unpacking the car, putting away groceries and supplies, and "profoundly" steam-cleaning the condo's carpet, there had been no time for a run yesterday morning.  But this morning I awoke early with the intention of running to Fort Macon and back on a route that has become very familiar to us over the past few winters.  

It was warm enough for a singlet, and although a little stiff starting out my legs soon loosened up and I enjoyed seeing the landmarks along the way:  the marsh grasses on my left across Bogue Sound and the buildings along the Morehead City waterfront, mainly the tall Bask Hotel, race headquarters for the Crystal Coast Half Marathon for many years; then the one-mile mark just past the Fort Macon State Park sign, and the two-mile mark just before the Coast Guard Station.  It is exactly two-and-a-half miles to the Fort, so it makes a perfect five-mile run, farther if one circles the parking lot a couple of times.  We are so familiar with the route that we know where Superintendent Randy Newman's house is.  I didn't see his beautiful golden retriever on the front porch, and I hope it is doing well.

I had thought this would be an easy run, sea level and (by Highlands standards) flat as a pancake.  But on the way back to the condo I slowed down and took several walking breaks, very much as if I was completing a much longer run.  I can only attribute my fatigue to five days without running and the 480-mile drive on Thursday.  Martha seems to have the ability to take off several days, or even weeks, from running, and then can begin again with no problems, but I start to deteriorate if I miss more than two or three days.  As I approached the Picnic Area, I decided to turn in and circle the parking lot a couple of times to give me six miles.  The west side of the parking lot was filled with surfers donning wet suits and carrying their boards from their pickup trucks across the dunes and down to the beach.  It was a quiet surf, but I suppose that riding big waves is not the purpose of surfing, just as catching fish is not the purpose of fishing.  On the east side of the parking lot, fishermen were unloading their rods and heading out for a day of surf fishing.  While I was running toward the fishermen, a small brown bird shrieked loudly at me as I passed his little bush:  "Hey!" he seemed to say.  I stopped and stared at him, only three or four feet away, and instead of flying away he just stared back at me in curiosity.  

I was relieved to return to the condo.  It had warmed up, and I downed a full bottle of Gatorade.  Martha had left a note saying she was walking on the beach, so I went out to the dune-top deck to wait for her, enjoying simply sitting in the sun.  A man and his wife squeaked by in a four-wheel wagon sort of vehicle containing folding chairs and what looked like eight or ten different fishing poles, out for the entire day on the beach, I guessed.  Martha's slim figure appeared walking toward me and she waved.  She had walked to the Oceanana Fishing Pier toward the west and taken some good photos which she shared with me.  This little group of sanderlings looking for breakfast in the surf:

And these fishermen lined up along Oceanana Pier.

She had also found a piece of a sand dollar.  "I decided I'm just going to get pieces, and put one together that way.  Everything's broken anyway." 

I thought that was a good plan, assembling something from spare parts, making all of the pieces fit imperfectly together.  Everything is broken.  It reminded me of that Leonard Cohen song:  "There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in."  

Yesterday, while driving to the post office, we had discovered that The Shark Shack was open and we had stopped for a take-out lunch.  We had heard about this place from Martha's niece Amy who has stayed out here during the summer, but it had always been closed during the winter.

Shrimp burgers piled so high that one order would have been enough for both of us, cole slaw, and hush puppies.  One would not want to eat that kind of fare every day, but it was our first lunch at the beach.  It turned out that they were closing the next day.  The young man at the take-out window told us they would be leaving for "the mountains," which they visit in the winter - just the opposite of us!  Today, we returned to our more normal fare:  black bean burgers and guacamole and pasta salad.  And this evening, Martha sauteed some flounder, with Taco Tuesday spice mix from Blue Ocean, with black beans and yellow rice.  Alas, no photo was taken of this simple meal, all the pieces of which fit perfectly together.

And so the day came to an end as it always does out here, with a gorgeous light show to the west, out beyond Oceanana Pier, as the sun sank into the Atlantic Ocean.

What a magical event these sunsets are out here!  The sky is just immense, and the clouds streaking across it are always just a little different.  And all around the horizon - north, east, south - a band of rosy light begins to glow, reflected from the blazing sun in the west.

Washed up on the Shore

We left Highlands early Thursday morning.  It was pitch dark when I went out onto the deck for my morning Tai Chi a little after 5:00 a.m.- a ritual I don't think I have missed in 30 years or more.  I could see the stars very clearly at this hour of the morning - the three stars on Orion's belt, the big dipper.  I was thinking that tomorrow morning I would be doing this same morning exercise on the dune-top deck of Sands Villas in Atlantic Beach, hearing the rhythmic sound of the ocean instead of this absolute silence here in our mountain valley.

We are not used to driving 480 miles in one day these days, but that is exactly what we proposed to do on Thursday, with no stops overnight and only minimal stops along the say.  The coronavirus pandemic is spiking everywhere, so our usual overnight stays at the Historic Brookstown Inn and evening fare at Meridian Restaurant next door were not on the calendar.  

We have heard first-hand accounts of the ravages that Covid-19 can inflict on even healthy men and women and are determined not to let our guard down.  It is very distressing to read on Facebook posts from friends who are defying CDC recommendations and are intending to hold their usual Thanksgiving feasts next week.

After a very long drive, we arrived at last in Atlantic Beach, driving over that familiar bridge across which we have both run half-marathons and 10-K races in the past.  It seems safe here, with signs posted at the elevators instructing residents to wear masks.

We unpacked a little - the rest can wait until tomorrow - and I went out on the walkway to watch the evening stars and listen to the quiet murmuring of the ocean out in the dark before me, flickering lights on the horizon that must have been freighters coming into Beaufort Harbor, or perhaps late fishing trawlers returning to port.  It was wonderful to be back here again, smelling that sweet salty fragrance of the ocean.

This morning, I went out on the dune-top deck to watch the sunrise, but there was a band of clouds on the horizon, delaying the appearance of the sun.  I am always surprised in a childish kind of way how predictable the sunrises are out here - 6:47 a.m., according to my iPhone - because in our valley in Clear Creek, we never see the sunrise.  Out here the sky is immense, and the ocean stretches out unimpeded  before us, and sunrise is punctual.  It always arrives right on time.

There was a lot of traffic down on the beach at 6:47 a.m., pickup trucks driving out to watch the sunrise, jet skis out in the surf, and fishing boats floating placidly by.  A woman walked by just as I was completing my Tai Chi routine, paused, and folded her hands in front of her in a "Namaste" sign.  A fishing boat was out on the water.

That would be a wonderful place to be this morning, I decided, in a fishing boat, with the sky slowly becoming brighter and brighter on the horizon.

We realized, as always, that there was a lot of work to be done in the condo upon arrival.  The air conditioning had broken down sometime during the summer, resulting in a lot of mildew.  So we went shopping and bought a carpet steam cleaner - The Bissell Proheat 2X Revolution Deep Cleaner (Limpiadora Profunda in Spanish) - which worked very well - one could almost say "profoundly."  Most of the day was spent cleaning and scrubbing, in fact, a labor of love for this place that Martha's aunt Lizette has graciously permitted us to call home for the past four or five winters.

By mid-afternoon, we had finished cleaning for the moment, and walked out on the beach down toward the Oceanana Pier to the west.  It is always fascinating to see what has washed up on the shore.  We saw more jellyfish than usual, for one thing.

This small one had just washed in on the surf, flopping over for this picture, but many more were spread out on the sand slowly drying out.  We were surprised that little dogs scampering by on leashes were not at all interested, which is a good thing because they can likely still deliver a painful sting.

A little ways down, we spotted something thrashing around a little in the surf, and wondered if it might be a small shark of some kind.

A little wave flipped it over and we could see that signature shark-face - the mean, beady little eyes, and the curved mouth, closed now in death, that enables the voracious appetite for which this remarkable creature is known.

A little farther on, we came upon these creatures washed up on the shore, mechanical beasts that we had already seen plying the warm, shallow waters - jet skis.

A young man came over to me as I took this photo, and I said, "I'm just taking photos of things washed up on shore," and he laughed.  "We're getting reach to launch them," he said, and true to his word, we heard their engines starting a few minutes later, and they proceeded to power up and down in the surf like dolphins at play, sometimes actually leaping out of the water.

And then it was time to return to the condo,  Somehow, in the course of the day, between buying a carpet steam cleaner and going to the grocery store, we had managed to find time to stop at Blue Ocean, our favorite seafood market just across the bridge in Morehead City.  What kind of seafood should we have on this, our first real evening in Atlantic Beach?  The only answer was scallops, lightly sauteed by Martha as she usually does, with just a little yellow rice on the side.  Delicious!

Sabbatical

After some fits and starts this month, winter has finally arrived in earnest in Highlands, here in mid-November with all the trees finally stripped of their leaves.  Although it has been cold off and on this month, yesterday was the first day when I felt the cold.  I arrived at Founders Park after finishing some errands, hoping that it would warm up a bit, but the wind was blowing hard.  The older I get the more I feel the cold and the wind, and I marvel sometimes at how easy it used to seem to run when the temperatures plummeted into the teens and single digits.  I still remember vividly those days, when I would feel snow and wind stinging my face so hard that I would sometimes run backwards for a few steps, just to get a little break.

By the time I reached the top of Chestnut Street hill, it had not relented much, so I did something I have not done for awhile and decided to climb Big Bearpen Mountain, my old adversary, that unrelenting ascent of some 800 feet in elevation.  I warmed up pretty quickly, as I had hoped, and as always it was worth the climb, the lakes of South Carolina shining on the horizon, Whiteside standing out clear and sharp on this cloudless day.  I saw no sign of that bear that beds down behind my friend Fred's house there on the summit.  Perhaps he has finally hibernated, although only a few days ago it was warm enough that somebody posted a picture of a snake crossing a road in our vicinity.

This morning, the wind had increased, and when I went out on the deck for my Tai Chi, I ducked around the corner to avoid some of its impact.  I checked the conditions up in Town on my iPhone when I came inside, and then I pulled up Atlantic Beach, NC, something I have been doing from time to time over the past few days.

I wrote "The Ocean is Calling" on our little kitchen blackboard this weekend, and we have been making preparations for what will be our sixth year staying at the condo on the beach owned by Martha's aunt Lizette.  It is through her generosity that we are able to stay there during the coldest part of the winter, where we can enjoy being outdoors running and hiking in a part of the Outer Banks that we have come to love.  This will be the earliest that we have left Highlands.  Because of Covid-19, we will drive straight there, not even stopping for an overnight stay in Winston-Salem as we usually do or having time to visit Lizette.  Readers of this blog will know that Martha's mama, Jane Lewis, passed away in June, and so Thanksgiving will be a sad time.  We are looking forward to a quiet Thanksgiving, just the two of us.

We call this time during the winter a Sabbatical, and that's exactly what it is:  a time to read, to write, to reflect on the year just past and the one lying just ahead, filled now with some hope because of the two different vaccines that have been developed and could be available as early as Spring - always assuming that the President-Elect will be permitted to take charge with competent people around him and good science guiding our future.  The current occupant of the White House - I have come to avoid using his name entirely - seems more interested in stirring up discord and playing golf than in bringing this pandemic to an end.

But that's something we hope to work on during this Sabbatical, too.  We hope we can put some of the stress of the past four years behind us and look forward to a new year, filled with possibilities, with hope, with a return to some kind of normalcy.  And we are looking forward to those long, long days, when we can bury ourselves in a book all day, or work on a poem, or go for a hike or a run to Fort Macon, our only appointments the sun and the tides.

Yes, the ocean is calling.  And we must go.

Adapting

The rain from the most recent Hurricane moved out of Highlands overnight, and the morning dawned clear and warm, as if it had sucked all that Caribbean sunshine behind it, a long trail of tropical air.  When I reached Town, it was in the mid-60s, warm enough for a singlet or sleeveless shirt.  By the time I had gone a mile, I was sweating.  On November 12, one day after Veteran's Day.

I thought I would take advantage of  the good conditions and completed two 400-meter intervals, which went pretty well. I saw no other runners out, though, and only one or two walkers, which was surprising as there still seem to be a lot of visitors in Town.  When I rounded the corner by Harris Lake I saw two Town Electric Department bucket trucks, both buckets raised in the air, working in tandem hanging Christmas lights.  That tree is one that has traditionally been lit for years, ever since we moved to Highlands; it used to look beautiful when the frozen lake was filled with ice skaters, but these past few years it has been too warm for it to freeze.  One rare exception was ten years ago, January of 2010, when a friend took this photo of me standing on the lake.  But I did not venture very far from shore.

I recognized the two men from my time working with the Town - Clay and Craig - and I called out to them when I passed by, "It's too early for that!"  Craig laughed and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, "What can you do?"  But I recognized that this was a good day, after all, to hang lights on that tree, balmy with just a little breeze.

Ice skating now takes place on the much safer (but smaller) ice skating rink, constructed several years ago as part of the Founders Park project.  What is during the summertime a pleasant rock and brick terrace is transformed this time of year into a rink.  Already the sides were up and it looked like it was beginning to freeze.  The frugal ex-Town Treasurer in me couldn't avoid thinking how expensive it would be to freeze the ice on such a warm day as this!

It's not too early for the holidays.  I don't know what they will be like this year for millions of families unable to travel or be with their families at Thanksgiving - only two weeks from today - and Christmas, or what safety protocols will be in place for ice skaters in Highlands.  This rink is a small one and in past winters has been packed with skaters, so I had guessed there will be a capacity limit and perhaps even masks.  Martha told me later that she had read that you could skate only by signing up and making a reservation.  That wasn't the way it was all those years ago on Harris Lake!  But like everything else in our lives right now, we will just have to adapt.

Running in Fog

In my last post to this blog, I wrote:  "Now we can look forward with hope to the beginning of the long, hard road ahead, of making things better again." As it turns out, that journey has not yet begun because, one week after the election, our current President refuses to concede as every other modern President has.  Without any evidence, he is claiming darkly that there was massive voter fraud. (Why that fraud would not also have resulted in more Democratic Senators has not been explained.)  In retrospect, it was naive to expect otherwise.

Even more worrisome is the thirty percent of the country that believes him, and the majority of the Republican Party who have refused to accept Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the election.  Martha and I have speculated how this kind of attitude would play out in the next road race we enter (whenever that might be).  I will simply claim outright the First Place Overall trophy.  "But you came in way behind most of the other runners," an exasperated Race Director might tell me.  "Doesn't matter.  It was a fraudulent race.  I refuse to accept that I did not win.  And if I don't get that trophy, I will file a lawsuit."

So instead of enjoying watching the huge nationwide celebration that took place Saturday night, where there was literally dancing in the streets, and listening with interest to the details of the progressive programs Joe Biden might have to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, pass a stimulus bill to help all of those who are hurting so much, and protect health insurance, we are listening once again to a Trump administration sucking up all the news.  It doesn't look as if this nightmare will end until January 20.

I had a good six-mile run yesterday during which I tried not to think about all of this.  And this morning I planned to run again, but was met with drizzling rain that increased in intensity on my way to Town.  I sat in my car for awhile, torn between getting soaked to the skin in a "character-building run" that I did not need after yesterday's six miles, or having to consider that I have indeed become a wimp.  I actually decided the latter, and started driving home, when the rain suddenly diminished, enough so that I turned the car around and returned to Town.  "I'll get in a mile, maybe two," I thought, but conditions remained nice, and I ended up completing three miles in thick fog.  I love running in the fog, just as I do in the snow!  And in mid-November, there are still bright blazes of color - Japanese maples, burning bushes - that seem to pop out more boldly than usual from the thickness of the fog.

But this is a familiar story to readers of this blog.  A window of opportunity opens for the hesitant runner, and he climbs through, sometimes being rewarded with the kind of run I had today, but often just the opposite.  The daily struggle with weather, terrain, and self.

Returning home, I noticed that our own burning bushes along the road are perhaps at their very peak of beauty, the leaves soaring upward through a rising spectrum of color, blazing crimson.  It is a beautiful time of year in Highlands!

There is good news, too, amid the drama of lawsuits and election recounts and the obstructionism of Republican Senators.  Pfizer has developed a vaccine that is 90% effective, and it will be available soon.  With competent people in our government once again, we can hope to return one day to some kind of normalcy.

President Elect

It was nice to come home from my long run on Saturday morning - eight miles in company with good friends, on another unseasonably warm November day - and see this on the news.

The final results keep changing day by day, but Joe Biden has either 273 or 290 electoral votes out of 270 required, and a popular vote lead of about four million.  The news networks declared him President Elect sometime Saturday morning.  

Joe Biden will have a tough road ahead.  The current administration has done much damage to our country and to our relationships with our allies, and its incompetent leadership has allowed the Covid-19 pandemic to spread without any containment, like those massive wildfires this year in California that one would hear described as "five-percent contained," or even less.  Last week, our country set a record for new infections:  100,000 in one day.  That comes to about one every second.  In the time it perhaps has taken a reader of this blog to reach this point in today's post, 40 people became infected.  One person dies of the virus every 80 seconds by last report.

We watched Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris speak to the nation last night, and they could not have given a more hopeful speech.  Hope has been in short supply these days!  He said, in part, what we are all longing to hear from a President:

"I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify. Who doesn't see red states and blue states, only sees the United States. And I will work with all my heart with the confidence of the whole people, to win the confidence of all of you."

We're with you, Joe!   Let us know how we can help!

It has been a long roller-coaster ride the past four years.  We knew four years ago that out nation was heading in the wrong direction.  In January of 2017, while we were staying in Atlantic Beach, Martha and I drove to Union Park in New Bern to attend the Women's March.  Millions of people around the nation, both men and women, attended similar gatherings, peaceful marches in protest of Trump's election.  I wrote this at the time (January 21, 2017):

"I feel that this is a similar 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."

That prediction turned out to be far worse than we could have imagined, with an economy in tatters, children separated from their parents at the border and locked in cages, Nazis marching in the streets, and a deadly pandemic raging out of control.  

But now we can look forward with hope to the beginning of the long, hard road ahead, of making things better again.  I have learned as a runner that we can heal after an injury and run once again.  Let us pray that this nation can heal in the same way, and head forward on the right road.  

Siempre Adelante Nunca Atras - always forward, never back.

Post-Election Stress

Two days after the election, a winner has still not been determined.  So we're watching more television than usual, alternating between MSNBC, CNN, and PBS.  On the so-called "Road to 270" MSNBC has Biden leading Trump 253 electoral votes to 214, PBS has it at 264 to 214.  From time to time we check to see if there has been any change, and I find myself watching one commentator or another going into far more detail about the electorate in Alleghany County, Pennsylvania, than I ever thought possible.

I can't remember watching election results with more anxiety than this year, except perhaps in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and lost the electoral vote.  That's because there is so much at stake this year.  One of the many commentators I heard sometime over the past week said that some 80% of Republicans thought that it would be disastrous if a Democrat won the Presidency, and the same percentage of Democrats thought the same about the other side winning.  That's certainly the way I feel about it. 

I also learned that 70% of Americans were experiencing stress over the election.  How do I deal with stress?  The way any good runner does.  Yesterday, I awoke early and ran six miles as hard as I could, and this morning I awoke early and ran three miles as hard as I could, including a fast ascent up "Monkey Hill" on Hickory Street, the steepest hill we have in Highlands, one that makes Big Bearpen look like an easy climb.  But that wasn't enough.  After lunch I got out the wheelbarrow and tackled that big pile of mulch down the road, completing ten of what I suppose I should call "wheelbarrow intervals" up the Sassafras Gap Road hill.  This is a project I began in early August and that big pile of mulch does not seem to be diminishing in size at all.  Our neighbor's little dog came out and stood on the bank above the road, barked once, and then fell silent and watched curiously this man who was working with such single-minded purpose that he barely noticed her.

It was a cool day, with a light breeze blowing, and after ten loads I realized I had stopped worrying about the election, for just a little while.  Soon I will return to that big map of Pennsylvania and wonder what is taking so long counting those ballots in Alleghany County.