Strawberry Jam 5-K

It has been three weeks since our last race, the Oscar Blues 4-Miler in Brevard, and we had signed up for this inaugural race in Bryson City.  It had initially been advertized as a “flat and fast” 5-K starting and ending in Bryson City in conjunction with a half-marathon, so we assumed it would be on the same course as the Firecracker 5-K, which we have run in past years on the Fourth of July and which is indeed flat and fast.  Fifteen years ago, I ran a 22:30 on that course, a time which still surprises me – did I actually run seven minute miles back in the day?

We discovered that the race was instead to be held as part of the (also inaugural) Strawberry Jam Festival at Darnell Farms, about two miles east of Town on the picturesque Tuckasegee River.  Two weeks ago, on a Mother’s Day trip home from the Highlands Hiwassee Wine Festival, we had checked out the course, and it was entirely on an unpaved gravel road along the river (The Old River Road).  Undaunted by this discovery, we had nevertheless planned to give it a try, and Martha had reserved a room at the Stonebrook Lodge the night before, one of the nicest places we have stayed recently.

My running had been going well.  Last Saturday I completed an eight-mile run, the farthest I have run in almost a year, and I had also been running some intervals in faster and faster times.  Monday I completed a nice, easy three-mile run which included some hills, including the formidable Monkey Hill on Hickory Street.  But Tuesday morning, I awoke feeling tired and sluggish, and my three-mile run on Wednesday was a disaster, characterized by many walking breaks and making me doubt in the final mile if I could complete it.  I remained fatigued all week, and were it not for any of the other symptoms (fever, aches, loss of smell, headache, etc.) I might have suspected that I had a case of the Omicron variant of Covid.  Martha had had a spell of similar fatigue two weeks ago over the Mother’s Day weekend but had recovered and was running better than ever last week.  So Friday morning I thought I should go and see what I could do.  Perhaps three days of rest would work its magic, and I could at least accompany Martha to the starting line and be there for her at the finish, if not walk the three miles.

We arrived in plenty of time to pick up our packets from a pair of friendly volunteers at Darnell Farms, confirmed where the course would be, and drove it in our Mini.  It was indeed a very scenic drive along the river – this is a photo our friend Anthony took (we found out later that he had run the half-marathon that morning).  Fisherman were parked along the road, and there were some out on the river in tubes.

But the road was even rougher than we remembered it, with loose rocks and boulders protruding from the surface.  “This section doesn’t look so bad,” Martha would say hopefully as we bumped along.  But our little Mini was struggling, and a car barreling by in the opposite direction raised a thick cloud of dust.  It was a course so rough that we would be required to walk much of it, and it would be an invitation for injury.  I commented that if our Mini was not comfortable with a course, perhaps we should reconsider.  On top of these conditions, I had discovered that there was a Code Orange air quality warning for race morning.

“Code Orange air quality is considered 'unhealthy for sensitive groups,' and active children and adults, and people with lung disease such as asthma, are advised to reduce prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors.”

That was the tipping point in our decision not to run this race.  In my 203 races to date, I have never been what runners call a “DNF” – Did Not Finish – nor has Martha.  That includes marathons almost entirely in the rain, a walking break due to an asthma attack during Martha’s first marathon, and, most recently, a 5-K in a downpour of rain ( the deceptively named Autumn Breeze 5-K – see post of October 4, 2021).  But there is no shame in being a DNS – “Did Not Start” – and we have both cancelled races for good reasons over the years.  I remember getting bronchitis a week before a marathon in Huntsville, Alabama, when my training had gone very well, and being forced to cancel.  We looked at each other.  “Are you sure?”  Yes, I said.  “Really?  You won’t get up in the morning and decide to run at the last minute?”  I swore.

So what to do?  Here we were in Bryson City, one block away from one of the best Italian restaurants in the area, Pasqualino’s, where we have consumed out usual pre-race plain-pasta-with-marinara-and-no-wine dinners in past years.  We returned to the Stonebrook Lodge, parked the car, and walked to the restaurant, where we enjoyed non-plain-pasta dinners (Chicken Cacciatore for me, Spinach and Ricotta Manicotti for Martha), and we enjoyed some very good wine.

And did we awaken Saturday morning with the wild idea that we might just drive the four minutes to the starting line and run this race anyway?  Yes, we both did.  But we realized that we had made the right decision.  We even saw some folks wearing the race shirt at lunch (pizza at Anthony’s by the railroad tracks).  “How was the race?” Martha asked.  “Great!” a woman replied.  “I did the half-marathon!”  We congratulated her, not without some envy and remorse.

It was Tennyson who famously said, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”  But I don’t think the same philosophy applies to running races.  It is not as if we have never run a race at all - just the opposite.  Sometimes it is better to not have run a race that would likely have been one of our slowest, and possibly resulted in injury.  As for me, I would honestly have found it difficult even to walk three miles.  I have continued to suffer fatigue, to the extent that I completed an at-home Covid Rapid Test this morning, which proved negative.  So I must suppose that I am suffering from something else entirely, although it does seem that I am on the mend.  As for Martha, her training is going better than ever, and she is focused on our next race, the Waynesville Main Street Mile on June 11.  That should be a distance that I can complete.

Oskar Blues 4-Mile Race

It could not have been a better morning for the Oskar Blues 4-Mile Race at the Oskar Blues Brewery in Brevard – a sunny day, temperatures in the 60s, and a light breeze.  We have run this race twice before, in 2015 and 2016, but on a difference course.  Leaving early in the morning in our Mini Cooper, we arrived in plenty of time (the start time was 11:00 a.m.) to check out the new course - as much as we could, anyway, since part of it was on the Brevard Greenway, a nicely-paved, broad Greenway trail on which we had finished the Flight of the Vampire last October, and also on which I had run a 5-mile race in 2017.  Flatter than any of those previous races, mostly in quiet neighborhoods where dogwood and azalea were in full bloom, we were looking forward to a new course and to seeing our friends Skip and MaryAnn.

I admit that I was not in the best condition for our first race since December. We had been working hard this week, my training had dropped off, and allergies were affecting both of us, with pollen counts in the Code Orange medium-high zone.  Sometimes this can result in a surprising turnaround once the race starts, but this morning my legs felt heavy as I warmed up in the parking lot of the brewery.  Our friends showed up, and Skip decided he would run with me (although I suspect he could have finished faster than I did).  We have run together for nearly 40 years, and it was nice to run a race with him again.  We tried to recall how long it had been since that had happened.  At one time, we were closely matched – I remember beating him to the finish by mere seconds in a race in Clarkesville nearly 30 years ago, and he did the same to me in Bryson City a few years later.  And one year we ran the Rocket City Marathon together, his first and only marathon, and he never stops reminding me how imprudent it was of me to continue in such a masochistic pursuit for many years after that.  I explain in turn that all the blood descends to my legs when I begin running a marathon and my brain stops functioning at full capacity.

The race was well-attended by families, with several mother-daughter and father-son pairings and plenty of strollers and dogs, all of them to be avoided.  It is always nice to see very young children running perhaps their first race.  Skip and I ran side-by-side, chatting amiably about past races, commenting on the beautiful azaleas and the nice, flat course.  I do love to make jokes during a race! – it seems to lift everyone’s spirits, including my own, so I asked volunteers along the way if they were sure there would be beer at the finish line, I accused one woman and her baby who passed us of having a motorized stroller, and so on.  But despite the flat course, each mile split was slower than the last one, except for the final mile which was partly downhill, and we crossed the finish line together in 52:00.

Martha, on the other hand, was absolutely on fire.  She disappeared ahead of us pretty quickly and I did not see her again until the finish, when she announced that her time was 38:20.  She had told me on the drive over this morning that she hoped to break 45 minutes, so this was indeed a spectacular finish time.  Looking back, she had finished in 2015 in 41:31, and in 2016 in 39:16, so this was a 4-Mile PR for her, and she is six years older now.  There were ten-year age groups and neither Skip (who is 69, and potentially running against 60-year-olds) nor I expected to place.  But Martha found that she had taken second place in her own age group, at the age of 66; the first place woman was a mere 17 second ahead of her, and she was only 60 years old.  Very impressive!

As for me, I confess that I was a little disappointed not to place at all in my age group.  Looking back at my race records, I have not failed to place in my last 15 races over the past three years, eight of those being first place.  I had been telling Skip how much he would enjoy turning 70 in November and being in a new age group – “Runners don’t grow old, they just enter new age groups.”  Still, I was a year older and there was some stiff competition in my age group – the first place winner, who was exactly my age, finished in 33:52, nearly twenty minutes ahead of me.  We all learn pretty early in a lifetime of running races that it does not pay to have a fragile ego.  There is always someone faster than you.  But it does pay to have a sense of humor!

So it was a good day, as every day is when we complete another race, another milestone, another achievement logged in the book of our lives.  And we never fail to learn something from a race, if we are paying attention.  What did I learn today?  Humility, and gratitude, and an appreciation for the beauty of this greening and flowering time of year.  At the end of the day, I was able to watch my beautiful wife set a deserving PR, we were able to celebrate recent good news that MaryAnn had received and her birthday tomorrow, and I was able to run a race with my oldest “running buddy” Skip – and all of those blessings were reward enough.

New Adventure on the Horizon

My last post to this blog was on March 10, the eve of our departure from Atlantic Beach.  We returned two days later, and it seems that there has been little time to spare since then.  Our long list of things to do upon return included such things as pruning and fertilizing and spraying the apple trees, working in the yard, appointments with doctors, and visits with friends and relatives.  We had a good overnight visit with Martha’s aunt in Clemson, had lunch with her brother, and had a nice lunch with our old friends Skip and MaryAnn in Brevard.

Less enjoyable tasks awaited us as well, such as filing our Income Tax return and paying a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles for a Drivers License.  I had discovered while in Atlantic Beach that mine had expired in February – I had not received a reminder – and the DMV office out there was by all reports the worst in the State (“Do they beat their employees in the back room or something?” one reviewer on Google said.  “Is it a requirement to work for the DMV that you have to be unhappy?”)  Thankfully, that was not the case at the Franklin office – the problem was that there was only one over-worked yet cheerful woman issuing Drivers Licenses for the entire county.  I arrived just after lunch to find the tiny office filled to capacity (five seats), the door locked, and two people already in line.  That line grew to more than a dozen (most of them to be sent away disappointed), while from time to time the Examiner came out to release a person from within and admit a new candidate.  After an hour I was admitted to the inner sanctum, where I could at least sit in a chair, and finally into the Examiner’s chamber itself, the Holy of Holies, where after a brief examination a very unflattering photograph of me was taken, which shall be my identity for the next five years.

Spring arrived tentatively, along with Daylight “Savings” Time (what is really “saved,” I wonder?), which is not welcomed by morning runners who face darker, colder mornings.  Still, we have both been running when weather permits, and I even encountered an old friend on Monday – Big Bearpen Mountain, which I have not climbed since last April.  Climbing to the summit without stopping is always a test of will power as well as leg strength, but the reward of those views at the top are worth the effort.  Justin Kinsland, owner of Highlands Excursions, passed me halfway up, driving a small family of sightseers to the top, and he was parked at the Whiteside overlook at the top.  “Do you need a ride?” he asked as I ran by.  I suppose he was joking.  Or did I look that wobbly?  A young boy in the back gawked at me in wonder as I passed.

April is always a month of surprises in Highlands, though, beginning with April Fools Day.  Yesterday afternoon I drove up to the Post Office and the grocery store, and when I reached the Eastern Continental Divide on the Walhalla Road, the few spatters of light rain on the windshield turned into snow, and by the time I reached the parking lot it was coming down in earnest, the first real snow we have seen.  This morning, I went out on the deck early for my Tai Chi and discovered a pretty good dusting of overnight snow.  With uncharacteristic good sense, I decided to postpone my Saturday morning long run.  It was 26 degrees in Highlands, road conditions were questionable, and I have fallen once this year and do not want to fall again.

One of the things that has kept us busy is ironing out the details of a planned trip overseas this year, a New Adventure on the Horizon, which I do not think I have yet mentioned in this blog.  Our original plan was to visit Scotland last year – ultimately cancelled due to Covid – and participate in something called the Scottish Highlands Tour, organized by a small group of Mini Cooper enthusiasts on a ten-day trip through the most picturesque parts of Scotland.

After watching some videos of past tours and immediately deciding, "Yes!  I'm in!" I realized also that this adventure would be . . . interesting, for a few reasons.  First, the roads are mostly two-lane with pull-offs (or “lay-bys” as they say over there), and aside from oncoming cars, there can be small herds of black-faced sheep in the road, obstacles we never encounter while driving our own Mini Cooper on this relatively sheepless side of the pond.  Even more interesting, in those places where there are two-lane roads, we will be driving on the left side - I have to be get used to saying “left” rather than “wrong - and even more alarming, the steering wheel is on the right.  I will not be leading the way!  But nothing worthwhile is accomplished, after all, without pushing the envelope, getting out of our comfort zones, and so these challenges cannot dampen our excitement.  Can we really be returning to one of the most beautiful countries we have ever seen and motoring in a Mini Cooper?

Since air fare is one of the most expensive components of a trip to Scotland, we decided to spend a little time in the area while we are there.  As we looked at all of the possibilities, including river and canal cruises and other tours in the UK, our plans evolved into a tour in France.  So we are planning to take the Eurostar train, which travels at over 200 miles per hour, through the Channel Tunnel (the “Chunnel”) to Paris, a trip that takes just a little over two hours and avoids baggage and airport transfers.  The Eurostar takes us directly from London's St. Pancras station to Gare du Nord in the heart of Paris.

In Paris, we will spend five days at the Hotel Mercure, taking walking tours of the city, visiting the Eiffel Tour and the Louvre, and even having a luncheon cruise on the Seine – all of these thanks to Martha’s good sense and ability to identify and make reservations.  (In fact, it was she who first found out about the Scottish Highlands Tour.)  After our time in Paris, we will begin a two-week Trafalgar tour that will take us on a route throughout France to see destinations we have longed dreamed of visiting, including Van Gogh’s Arles, Monet’s Giverny, Monaco, the Riviera, Lourdes, Bordeaux, and the beaches of Normandy.

We are not seasoned travelers, but this will be our third Trafalgar tour, and we have found all of them to be excellent.  The itinerary is extensive, and the tour guides are unfailingly informative.  We will be not just travelers on a sightseeing trip, but explorers diving into the culture and the history of the country, with plenty of local down time to explore on our own.  We are as excited about this part of the trip as the first part.  Also, I will see if my high school French will stand me in good stead, taught to me by a wonderful teacher named Miss Satterlee 55 years ago (who did not allow us to speak English in her classroom), continued in an intensive semester in college, and was sharpened by a bilingual French-Canadian fellow-student, Pierre.  I cannot say that I am fluent in French, but what I know may be adequate, and it is a beautiful language that I love to hear.

We have spent a lot of time working out the details of this trip, which will begin on June 30 and end on July 29.   That's a month, and we will let our vegetable gardens and apple trees fend for themselves.

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Our surprised passports were retrieved from the Safety Deposit Box where they have been sleeping for three years, and we are working on the day-to-day itinerary - what train is best to take from London to Birmingham, where our Scottish Highlands Tour friends will pick us up?  What size luggage can we carry on the Eurostar?  (85cm long at its widest point).  How long is 85cm?  

We will say farewell to ordinary things for nearly a month as we embark on an extraordinary journey. In a matter of only two or three months, this blog will take its followers on new adventures - from the “hairy coos” of the Scottish Highlands to La Ville des Lumieres – the City of Lights. 

Who knows what will happen before then?  Covid is surging in many parts of the world, including the UK, but we are vaccinated and boosted and will have a second booster before we leave.  A war is raging in Europe every bit as horrifying as World War II, with more than four million Ukrainians fleeing to Poland and other parts of Europe, some of them to France.  We pray that the violence will come to an end before this summer, but we just don't know.  Part of me could feel guilty that we will be stopping in Bordeaux to taste wine and gaze at the sun setting on a vineyard, while so many will be suffering so close to us.  But in the same way that we live our lives here in Highlands, striving to find peace in our hearts in the midst of it all, we must go and see and do what we can while we are still young enough to travel.  If not now, when?  The City of Lights beckons to us from across the ocean.

And now I find that beautiful song by Judy Collins going through my mind, the one she wrote about the same time I was learning French from Miss Satterlee:

My father always promised us
That we would live in France
We'd go boating on the Seine
And I would learn to dance

I sail my memories of home
Like boats across the Seine
And watch the Paris sun
As it sets in my father's eyes again

Going Home

“And now this blog may fall silent for a few days as we continue packing and begin the long journey back home to Highlands,” I wrote on Tuesday.  But Wednesday morning I awoke to such a remarkably beautiful morning sky that I just had to post once more.

It had rained overnight, but the sky was just starting to break apart into blue sky to the east, while there were ominous-looking clouds to the west.  I took this video from the dune-top deck, east to west.

I began my Tai Chi immediately after taking the video, and had almost finished when those ominous clouds had approached and I felt a scattering of raindrops on my head.  By the time I had finished, it was coming down pretty hard, but it was a gentle rain and I did not mind at all as I walked back down the walkway to the condo, turning my face up to the sky to feel it falling. 

Five minutes later the sun was shining, and I took this photo of a ghostly partial rainbow over the adjoining houses and the playground equipment.  By the time I started running, an hour later, any trace of clouds had completely disappeared, and I had a good run down to the picnic area, including some hard intervals, and came back on the beach.

On the horizon these past few mornings I have noticed that there is a ship, just off Beaufort inlet, not a fishing boat but an ocean-going freighter.  It is waiting for the right time and tide to begin to make the long voyage across the turbulent ocean, going home.  Safe voyage, sailors!  May the winds be at your back.

Banker Horses

The tempo of our quiet days out here along the ocean seems to be accelerating this past week or two, and as a  result I have not posted anything to this blog in ten days.  We realized last week that, as surely as the tides coming and going and the moon waxing and waning, our time here is dwindling down, and we will be leaving on Sunday morning.  There is a lot of packing and organizing to do, but we have also tried to make time for some day trips. 

Last Sunday, we drove to New Bern to enjoy a matinee performance by the RiverTowne Players of a musical comedy called The Wedding Singer, based on the 1998 movie by the same name starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.  The venue is the historic Masonic Theater, which opened in 1805.  It is always a pleasant surprise, as it is in Highlands, to discover a group of amateur players who love the theater and who throw themselves completely into a production that in this instance lasted only two weeks.  The lead (I assume the Adam Sandler character in the movie) was very good, and we were surprised to find from the playbill that he was an ex-Marine who teaches 7^th grade math at Havelock Elementary School!

The weather has turned warmer here, so warm that on Saturday after our long run we arranged to take the three-mile ferry trip from Beaufort to Shackleford Banks, one of several small islands just off the coast and part of Cape Lookout National Seashore.  While waiting for the ferry to depart, we walked around Beaufort and I saw this sign, as well as more than one vehicle flying a blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.  It is heartening how our country seems to have come together, for the most part, in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, and the latest news is that consumers would even support higher gas prices if it means tightening sanctions on Russia.

Shackleford Banks is unoccupied but it is famous for a herd of about a hundred wild horses that live there, browsing on the sparse grass and drinking water from one or two spring-fed ponds in the middle of the island.  Like the so-called “Banker Horses” which we have seen in Corolla, the origin of these horse is unknown, although legend says they are descendants of Spanish mustangs that survived a shipwreck.  I have read that DNA studies confirm that heritage.  The horses are protected and visitors are supposed to remain 50 feet away and not disturb them.  We had visited the island five years ago and seen quite a few of these beautiful creatures.

There were nearly forty passengers on the ferry but we felt pretty safe out in the open air; only one or two passengers wore face masks.  Our captain told us that he had witnessed a remarkable sight a month or two ago.  A fisherman on board a chartered boat had just reeled in a large bluefin tuna and he had nearly brought him on-board, when a great white shark leapt out of the water and bit off half of it before disappearing into the ocean. 

We disembarked on the island and everybody scattered in different directions, some to wade in the surf and collect shells, but most to find some of the horses.  We were not disappointed, as we soon came upon a group of three, and later three or four more.  

We tried to maintain fifty feet of separation, but one of the horses in particular kept approaching us – he must not have known about the regulation, or else he smelled something interesting in a backpack.

Shackleford Banks once had permanent residents, and we wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this as we wandered back to wait for the ferry.  Its only structure now, aside from some very rudimentary restrooms, is the imposing Cape Lookout lighthouse with its diamond pattern, which is at the other end of the island, accessible by a ferry from Harker’s Island.  We took that ferry several years ago and I took this photo at the time.

This past Sunday we drove to Bath, NC, a historic town dating to 1705 and containing some fine old homes and churches.  We had lunch at Blackbeard’s Tavern, an older building with uneven floors but with surprisingly good food and beer and friendly staff.  Bath was once home to the notorious pirate Edward Teach, AKA Blackbeard.

These distractions try to give us a brief respite from the grim news reports coming out of Ukraine, which are absolutely heartbreaking.  I find myself watching cable news on my computer for longer than usual, watching the terrible devastation of beautiful cities and the evacuation of two million refugees, until finally I force myself to pull away to go running or to go work out hard at the Sports Center, just to burn up the stress. Or to take a trip to a desert island.

I always used to wonder who I’d bring to a desert island.
Days, I remember cities.
Nights, I dream about a perfect place.
Days, I dive by the wreck.
Nights, I swim in the blue lagoon.

- Laurie Anderson, Blue Lagoon

And now this blog may fall silent for a few days as we continue packing and begin the long journey back home to Highlands. 

73 Ibises

Highlands Roadrunner celebrated his 73^rd birthday on Wednesday by  – how else? – running four miles the first thing in the morning.  I included two intervals at the Picnic Area and returned on the beach, which is always a glorious way to end a run and celebrate a birthday.  For lunch, we went to the Beach Tavern & Grill, just down the road in Atlantic Beach and for some reason under our radar.  It was a 50-year-old Mom and Pop place – Mom was our waitress, Pop was cooking in the kitchen (today's special:  lasagna), and daughter (who  began working there at the age of 13) was at the bar.  It was very good, and we will return again.  For dinner, Martha treated me to a nice dinner of tapas at Circa 81, a restaurant we have enjoyed in the past but not been back to since Covid, and it too was very good.

My friend Skip was among the many friends and relatives, including my sister and daughter, who contacted me and wished me a Happy Birthday.  “Still not another age group yet,” he texted, and it was true, although as I replied to him “For an old guy like me it is often 70 and over.”  My octogenarian friend Fred ran such a race last year, but when the race director learned that he was 82 years old when he finished, he created a new age group on the spot of “80 and over.”

My celebration of another birthday, a loving wife and daughter and many friends, of life and health and fitness, was darkened the very next day when we learned that Russia was invading Ukraine.  We have been watching the news and it was not unexpected, but still it is a shock to see images of innocent Ukrainian civilians huddling in metro stations with their children and their pets, here in this cosmopolitan country in the 21^st century, the beautiful historic city of Kyiv being hit with ballistic missiles.  Surely this is as significant an event as Germany invading Poland in 1939.  There is no reasoning with a KGB thug like Putin, but it is at least encouraging to see our country taking the lead in organizing a world united (mostly) against such an unjust and evil act of war.

It is almost difficult to enjoy ourselves when we stop to think of the hardship that the Ukrainian people are enduring.  So we continue to run, to walk on the beach, and to try to stay fit.  Martha checked out a water aerobics class at a facility in Morehead City that, like the Beach Tavern, was under our radar.  I had been working out at the City’s Recreation Center pre-Covid, and before that at a place called Anytime Fitness.  This facility is simply called the Sports Center, and in addition to the water aerobics there are full-size indoor and outdoor swimming pools, basketball/pickleball courts, a large space for yoga and aerobics, and even two racquetball courts.  And most spectacularly of all, there is a huge gym with four large rooms for Nautilus-Cybex and free-weights – every imaginable kind of exercise equipment.  It finally seems safe to work out again in a gym, and we have both visited many times since discovering it the week before last, Martha enjoying the water aerobics and yoga and me exploring the weight rooms.

It’s what we do when we have another birthday:  strive for fitness and health.  As the poster that I have hanging in our house says, these birthdays are not for sissies.

It was another sunny but very windy day on Friday, so we went hiking at Fort Macon again, this time on the salt marsh portion of the Elliott Coues Nature Trail, which is more sheltered from the south wind.  We began on the Yarrow Loop, where we have been on bird hikes before, and immediately we saw a juvenile ibis, just like one that has been hanging out at the driveway to our condo.  The juvenile is brown, and as it matures it acquires patches of white before finally turning completely white.  My photo did not do the little fellow justice, but when we continued around the trail, we came upon this spectacular sight: a multitude of ibises roosting in the trees.  I did not count them but Martha said there were 73.

Martha continued on the trail toward the Picnic Area, where I later picked her up, but I was interested in seeing Fort Macon itself, something I had been meaning to do while we are here.  They installed this impressive World War II gun a couple of years ago, an original 155 millimeter caliber field gun that would have been used for defense in that war.  Despite its age, I couldn’t help thinking that our Ukrainian allies would be happy to have a few of these right now.

In fact, they might have been happy to have some of the civil-war era guns on display, as well.  That’s a 30-pound parrot rifle, top left, and a six-pounder field cannon below that.  And on the top right is a ten-inch siege mortar, and below that one of several big cannons mounted on the top of the fort, pointing out toward Beaufort inlet.  These are 10-inch columbiads, which could hurl their 128-pound cannon balls up to 3.2 miles away, and they were extremely accurate.

And so it goes.  Endless, senseless wars.  1862.  1939.  2022.  Will we ever see the end of them? 

Cemeteries

It may seem morbid to some, but I have always thought that cemeteries are some of the most beautiful places.  Memorial Park in Highlands comes to mind, with its gentle grassy slope and its views off to the west.  Even though loved ones are buried there, it is a peaceful and lovely place.  I have even written two or three poems set in that cemetery.

Across the expanse of marble-marked grass
Morning birds were singing in the distant trees.

Atlantic Beach is a short distance from Beaufort, where my great aunt lived before moving to a retirement home in Florida.  She was my father’s sister, whom we always called Aunt Marion, and I vaguely remember visiting her there well over 50 years ago.  I think she even took us to the famous Sanitary Fish Market and Restaurant.  I had always wondered where she lived, and Martha, who is able to find things on the computer that are difficult for most of us, discovered that she had lived on Ann Street.  We found the tiny frame house easily enough but it did not ring any bells in my memory.  Then Martha found that she was buried not far away, in Ocean View Cemetery.  It took us three visits, including a final stop at the Beaufort Town Hall to consult a map produced by a helpful woman named Lorraine, before we found where she and her husband George were buried.  And what a surprise!  Next to her plot was the grave of Edward Strembel, her brother whom we called Uncle Ed, and whom I have an even vaguer memory of visiting when I was perhaps ten years old when he lived in Valley Stream, Long Island.

It was a very nice cemetery, and while trying to find Aunt Marion’s headstone, we saw simple headstones and elaborately carved ones, as well as all of those curious things that people place on graves.  There was a statue of a little dog, and one of the headstones had a very clear portrait etched into it of a beautiful young woman.

But I think my favorite cemetery is the Old Burying Ground, deeded to the Town of Beaufort but dating to 1709, which I visited last Wednesday.  We had been to the N. C. Maritime Museum to hear an interesting lecture about the Menhaden Industry here.  As with many of their presentations, it was very detailed, but I can say that we can now regale anyone we meet with stories about this tiny fish that was harvested not for food but for its oil and its qualities as a fertilizer.

The Old Burying Ground contains graves dating to the Civil War and even to the Revolutionary War, and the Historical Society gives tours and distributes an interesting brochure about those who are buried there.  We have visited before and I wrote a long poem about it which I may publish some day.  On Wednesday, I found the gates locked, though, and went to the Historical Society’s Visitor Center to ask about it.  “Oh, that happens all the time!” a volunteer told me.  “Let me get the police to go by and unlock it.”  I hadn’t thought it would require a 9-1-1 call for me to gain access, but when I returned a while later the gates were wide open.

Little Virginia Dill’s grave is near the front gate, and her stone has a sleeping child on its top.  She died of yellow fever and was buried in a glass-top casket, for some reason.  The story goes that the grave was dug up by vandals and the body in the casket was intact, but as soon as they opened it the body disintegrated.

 
An unnamed British naval officer is buried toward the back.  He died on board ship in Beaufort harbor, and not wanting to be “buried with his boots off,” he was buried standing up in full uniform.

There are many such stories buried in this shady place under live oak trees and wisteria vines.  Sarah Gibbs was married to the seaman Jacob Shepard, who disappeared on his ship and was presumed dead.  After a time, she married Nathaniel Gibbs and had a child with him, but after an absence of several years Jacob returned to find Sarah married to another man.  The two men agreed that Sarah would remain with Gibbs as long as she lived, but must spend eternity at Jacob’s side, which is where she is buried.

Not far from the British Soldier is a grave containing sailors who froze to death when the Crissie Wright was wrecked in January of 1886.  It is marked by only three or four bricks.  “Cold as the night the Crissie Wright went ashore,” is a phrase still used around this part of the coast.

One of the most “popular” graves is the Girl in a Barrel of Rum.  An English family in the 1700s moved to Beaufort with an infant daughter, and when she grew up she wanted to see her homeland, finally persuading her father to take her.  His mother made him promise that he would return the girl safely, but she died on the voyage back to Beaufort.  Her father could not bear the idea of a burial at sea, and so he kept his promise by buying a barrel of rum from the captain and placing her in it for burial.  The grave is always covered with flowers, stuffed animals, beads, seashells, and other tokens of affection.  But according to one account, the story doesn’t end there.  “There are those who say that the figure of a young girl can be seen running and playing between the graves in the Old Burying Grounds at night.  They say that the tributes left on the young girl’s grave are often moved about the graveyard at night, often found sitting balanced on top of other gravestones or in places they couldn’t have moved to by just the wind.”

(Time for some spooky music to play in the background.)  It is a spooky place.  But a very beautiful place.  As are all cemeteries.