from the Outer Banks of North Carolina: Ocracoke Island

We’re sitting at a place that serves breakfast late. Eggs over easy and grits. I watch as Ed adds milk and sugar to his bowl of grits. I break an egg over them. Loaded with pepper. Two people traveling together, with such different approaches to a plate of grits.

I read the forecast: hail, storms, strong winds. All today. At least it’s not a hurricane. Naturally, people here take storms in stride. You can't live on the Outer Banks if you're going to worry about wind and water.

The rain is starting now. We weigh our options and decide to go ahead with our plan to hop over to Ocracoke Island. It’s just south of us, but it can only be reached by ferry. Forty five minutes from our own island of Hatteras.

The rain is steady and for the first time in the Carolinas I feel the chill of a damp and soggy day. We park the truck in the ferry line and wait. I don’t smell a violent storm brewing, but it is nonetheless a very wet and windy day. I ask Ed if he thinks ferries sink in bad weather.
You should be so lucky. Instant law suit and a nice sum of money for your daughters.
I relax.
The ferry pulls away.







Ocracoke Island is an odd little place. To me, it looks like a soup ladle: the arm is one long road with protected shoreline on either side (the ferry from Hatteras docks at the very top of the handle). The soup-holding part is the village and harbor. Settled by the British, God knows how many hundreds of years back (remembering that in 1587, the first settlement was organized by Sir Walter Raleigh on Roanoke -- just a few islands north of where we are now), it’s been so isolated that the people continue to speak in a brogue that has been analogized to something akin to Australian English.

To me, Ocracoke looks magnificent on the handle part and sort of sad on the soup carrying part, where the people, especially visitors congregate. The shops, the motels, the rental huts look weather worn and mostly empty. The marina has very few docked boats. It's as if the party has moved elsewhere. Of course, to us, that's a good thing. The quiet is very beguiling. And yet, you feel for the locals who have given over their harbor to attract boat people and day trippers. Empty spaces mean lean times. Our motel keepers back on Hattaras have put a lot of money into cleaning up an old-style motel. They're paying their bills now, but just barely.



Ocracoke marina


But before we reach the village of Okracoke itself, we make a few stops along the protected shorefront. The long beach along the handle of the soup spoon is magnificent! Even on this gray and wet day.









In the middle of the “handle,” the National Park Service looks after the wild ponies of Ocracoke. At least they used to be wild. Once the road was build across the island (some fifty years ago), the ponies were thought to pose a hazard and now their movements are restricted to this small patch of land.





In the village, we stop at the Flying Melon (a New Orleans dude is cooking here and judging by the menu – I had a fried oyster po’ boy – he’s doing a good job of it). It’s lunch, it’s brunch, it’s a meal in between all meals and it’s quite okay.





But we both pass on dessert. Which says something.

We feel satiated and a little under-exercised. It’s gray still, but the rain has stopped. The storms neve came. The weather is never a sure thing here.

We visit a local museum and listen to tapes on how it was to live here some 100 years ago. Men fished, women took care of life’s essentials. Perhaps in that regard, not much has changed. Men who stay here like the crabbing and fishing. Women can find work mostly in tourism – especially serving and preparing food for others.

And every few years, a hurricane comes and covers the islands with water.



We leave on a late afternoon ferry as the skies reveal wide swatches of blue. Ed talks about sailing here on his coastal journey south some years back. He points out the breakers and the ribbons of shifting sand.





On the calmer side, we see huts perched off shore. Duck hunting cabins. We have them in Wisconsin except they're on firmer ground.





The skies are looking better now and Ed is anxious to hit the waves again. As the sun dips toward the horizon, we head back to our beach by the lighthouse.





I’m not interested in swimming. I play the good admiring companion who sits and watches the man work the waves. Occasionally I am diverted by beach life, coming out of hiding now that the day is nearly done.










On the way back to the motel, we stop and play tennis. One ball goes to the swamp. Ed retrieves it. I grin.

At the motel, we eat cheese and crackers and grapes and I catch up on fragments of work late into the night.

from the Outer Banks of North Carolina: Hatteras Island

We are unprepared for it. The sunshine, the warmth – all of it. I studied the Net for weather patterns, but for once, all predictions (for storms and rains) were off. And here’s another thing: the seventies here are not the same as the seventies up north. Here, you sweat. At home you need a sweater.

I coax Ed out by late morning, but he is not ready for the beach. I sense trepidation. It’s one thing to sail down the coast of North America, solo, to pull up on small islands and pitch a tent and read a book until the light goes down, it’s another to go with your occasional traveling companion (me) to a beach place just to hang out.

So we start with the familiar – a game of tennis at the community center courts. If you hit the ball too high and it goes over the fence, you lose it, or you go down into the swampy undergrowth and look for it. Twice Ed hoists himself down into the marshes in search of a wild ball. I can't stop laughing.


And now we are loose and island ready. We walk to the beach unencumbered (except for the camera). It’s not a short walk – Hatteras Island bends here and the National Seashore commands a hefty chunk of land at the elbow. You have to enter the park by road and it takes a while to get to the shore. But, we are barefoot and the skies are blue and winds are perpetually blowing in our face. We talk of putting up a shack and staying here. It is a sign of contentment, nothing else. We have such shacks all over France and Italy and more recently – California, Connecticut and the Carolinas.

In afternoon light, the beach looks markedly different than at dawn. But its sharp, defined colors are equally stunning. And the place is still almost completely empty.





Ed sees the waves.





Let’s put our shoes down and go in!
No no. That’s not how you do it. You walk away from the beach entrance, find a spot, dig in and eventually, after much contemplation and discussion, hit the water.
(Ten steps later) Okay – this spot. Here. Now. I’m going in.

And he does. His powerful body is, for once, at the whim of a greater force. He rides the wave until the very end, then tumbles out onto the shore.





He does this again and again. Sometimes, he disappears under water for so long that I become uneasy. But, he emerges laughing, heaves himself out, stumbling unsteadily and goes back for another run.

I watch for a while...





...and eventually plunge in myself, though not nearly with his abandon. The undertow is strong and I struggle to stand up even in shallow water. Eventually I retreat to the wet sand and watch birds run toward the water and then away from the foaming wave.





Tired, Ed joins me on the sand and we build the sloppiest, most ridiculous sand castle. With moats and uneven turrets and a deep well in the middle. And then I coax him for a walk along the infinite coastline.

We see on the horizon the glimmer of metal. As we get closer, we realize that there is a short stretch where cars and trucks are permitted to drive down to the water’s edge. (This is a source of local controversy: there are those who want to keep everything, people included, off the ecologically sensitive waterfronts, and there are those who want to roll right down to the water and throw down their lines.)

…while the birds watch with amazement.




It’s a lazyman’s sport, I think.





You cast, and you need do nothing else for the rest of the hour.










We watch for a while and then head back toward the lighthouse and our path home.





Gulls keep us company. Their squawk, the crashing water and the gusts of wind make it at once a peaceful and sound-filled walk.







I’m hungry early, but dinners here are served early and the fishermen exerting all that energy out there, on the beach, like to eat early as well. We head toward a local favorite – the Captain’s Table. I order NC grilled shrimp and scallops.





Delicious. I ask the owner and a local fisherman who happens to be leaning at her desk when the season for soft shell crab starts.
Soon. In a couple of weeks. But you know, it seems that everything comes later these days.
The fisherman agrees. Next time have the tile fish. It’s in season right now.
And the grouper?
My husband (he is a fisherman and co-owner) doesn’t look for it often. Because of the limits. It doesn’t pay for him to go 30 miles off shore searching for it. He can’t bring in that much.
All your fish here are local?
Except for the oysters. We get those from the Chesapeake Bay.


We walk home along the main road. People wave to us. Friendly. At the grocery store, they ask us about our day.

At the playing field next to the school, we pause and watch a little league game. No one is hitting well, but the parents and friends are enthusiastic. The dads are coaching. One comes over and admits – I’m more nervous than they are.

A kid drops her bat to tie her shoe. The little ones out in the field crouch low and wait. The pitching machine throws out a ball. She misses. Strike three! The parents applaud, she runs off and the next one comes to bat. We retreat as the game goes into another inning.

The walk home to our motel becomes shorter each time we make our way along Route 12. Something to do with the familiarity of it by now.

from the Outer Banks of North Carolina

Finally, I have time. At this moment, I have nothing pressing, nothing requiring immediate attention, nothing that has to be done today or tomorrow or the day after.

I can write in full sentences.


I’m on a pseudo road trip. To my law students, I would say it is a constructive road trip. It has elements of it, so let’s just call it that.

We’re on the east coast because Ed again has to review storage crates from his family belongings in New York. It struck me that a detour to the Outer Banks of North Caroline might distract him, especially since the man loves sailing more than life itself. And there are some mighty cool catamarans and trimarans to be had (or rented) down there.

But, my time, as always, is tight. And so we drove crazily, without attention to roadside anything, just so we could fit in a handful of days on the islands and then proceed up north to give more attention to estate issues.


We didn’t quite make it to Chapel Hill the first night (we were, I think, wise enough to call it quits after 850 miles, even though we had only 75 miles to go), but early the next day, we toddled in (en route to the islands) and, thanks to Ed’s friend who lives there, took a look around.

The UNC campus -- one of the oldest in the south -- is lovely, especially at this time of the year. The grass is truly greener here than on Bascom Mall. And their Mall trees have robust flowers!





(As does the garden of Ed's friend.)






We ate Carolina shrimp at the Carolina Inn…





…then waved good-bye and headed due east. Past lowlands and forests touched by swampy canals. Past meadows of poppies and cornflowers.






Do you know the Outer Banks of North Carolina? A thin strip of islands, reached by ferry or, from the north, by a series of long bridges? I found a place to stay at the very southern tip of the Banks – in the hardest to get to island (and therefore, I am hoping, the most beautiful of the lot).

A drive here at dusk is both exhilarating and a little disturbing. You feel like you’re putting a lot of distance between yourself and the rest of humanity. People who live here like the separation from the mainland. Me, I need a minute to adjust.


We cross the bridges, one after another. The day has been full of rain, but now the skies have settled. The air is warm and humid. The water is reflecting the still gray skies.

We pick up the one road that snakes down south from one island to the next. There are villages with small, weather beaten houses and a few stunning vacation rentals. Sand dunes rise to the left – the Atlantic side. But really, there is sand everywhere.











We reach our motel at Hattaras Island. It’s the kind of place I remember staying in when we took road trips across America in the 60s, in the family Chevrolet. It’s dark now. In the off season, you don’t see many people on the road. We pull up the rusty nose of the truck to our door. It’s quiet in our room. Except, somewhere in the distance, I hear the hum of the ocean.



In the morning, I am up at sunrise. I take the truck out to look around.

The lighthouse. The tallest in the country. Easy to find.





And right behind it, the ocean.





The morning mist blurs the border between sea and endless miles of sand. It is a canvas of such soft colors! I stand and watch the water chase the birds up and down the wet sand.

road trip!

…But is it really a road trip if you spend 18 hours straight on the road?

We leave Madison at sunrise.




And we hit that corridor of highway boredom. Heading south, to Chicago... stuck in rush hour city traffic... through the industrial swamp hugging southern Lake Michigan... then onto the flat landscape of Indiana and only slightly more perky Ohio.


Ed and I share a love of the backroad, but this time we’re in a hurry and so we’re stuck on those never ending ribbons of highway that sound great in a Woody Guthrie lyric, but when you're on them -- feel as spiritless as a bowl of pasta with nothing on it.

We push forward, one book-on-tape after another, past billboards and gas stations and exits, tempting one to get off, get off.

I do most of the driving at first. Ed knows what he has to do to get me to take over – a few miles of working the wheel with his wrist (it’s comfortable that way! Out you go; I’ll drive).

Somewhere off the too-long highway in Indiana we make stops to borrow WiFi from parking lots of motels and fast food chains. We buy cheese and crackers and pickled mushrooms at a grocery store. Road food in a hurry.


By late afternoon, we finally cross over to West Virginia. Google has put us on a country road that twists around the hills of Appalachia. Bridges cross muddy waters, green forests hide old homes and private lives with untold stories.










But I am getting tired. In direct proportion to the fading light. Our goal for the day is Chapel Hill (Ed’s friend will overnight us there), but I protest that this is too ambitious. We begin the discussion as to whether we should pause for a rest in West Virginia, continue it in Virginia, culminating to a nonstop gentle back and forth on the wisdom of driving this late all the way across North Carolina.

In the end, it’s a little like childbirth: if you don’t choose the anesthetic early it becomes too late to benefit from it. Because even though we finally do stop, just an hour short of Chapel Hill, it is past two in the morning and the benefit of a fitful sleep is lost.

No matter. In a few hours the sun will be up again and we’ll continue east.

The fog was lifting, a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me...

just another day

A week-end of brilliant skies and soft May colors.

In the afternoon, my daughter and I drive south to Governor Dodge State Park. She asks for a hike in a park with a lake. Sure, of course. It’s easy here. We have lakes to please.





We follow a trail around the water. Hurried stories now, because there is little time. We have to fit it in.










It’s beautiful here. It is possible to understand that life can be at once simple and very magnificent.






I cook a favorite dinner and we eat it out on the balcony. It is past seven, but for the first time this year, we can do this. The evening is like a summer evening – calm, inviting, sentimental.





Before dawn, she catches her flight back to Washington and Ed and I set out east as well, but in a more rambling and rumbling way. She will be at her work desk by noon. Ed and I will be bumping along, hoping the 1992 Ford pickup will stay in one piece. We have a thousand miles before us today and another three hundred the next day. We’re equipped with sleeping bags and water in case we have a breakdown. If the roads are kind, I’ll post from North Carolina tomorrow.

returning to Wisconsin

She’s been living on the east coast for ten years now. All of her young adult years. But when she is home, in Madison, it’s as if she never left. Nearly all of her school friends have moved away, but I need not worry that she comes home to a social void. She is as happy on a solo walk, in the company of mom, or going for a motorcycle ride with Ed.

Always, a daughter's visit home includes a visit to the downtown farmers market. It is a beautiful morning and we stroll without purpose (I am leaving on Monday and so have nothing to buy) and without hurry.





Even as the sidewalk space for the market has grown, much of the content remains the same over the years and making the circle for the first time this season confirms that many familiar vendors are still here, starting their spring run of spinach, mushrooms, bedding plants, and, for the first time this season – asparagus. Predictably, flowers steal the spotlight. I prefer these to the vibrant reds of August. Perhaps because we have moved so quickly now from months of no color, to a market of yellows and pinks.





We usually begin the Downtown Market orbit at Café Soleil, my former place of moonlighting work, but one unexpected change this year is their decision to cut back on baked goods by 10:30 and switch to a lunch “menu” – a huge loss for all of us who don’t stop by until the late hours of the morning. If you’re as disappointed as we were – tell Tory and Traci you want the spice girls and chevre croissants back on the shelves for all of market time! Only in early-to-rise Midwest would week-end brunch munching have to come to an end before the sun reaches a decent warm spot in the vast skies above us.





No matter. We had always wanted to try Madison’s favorite market bread – Stella’s spicy cheese loaf – and we happily pull at warm twists of cheesy bread the rest of the market morning.





Only once do I remember that a week ago, I was in a Warsaw park. the flash comes when I see that a vendor has a small tray of these familiar little forget-me-nots.







In the afternoon, my daughter and I set out on a long hike. She loves the south Wisconsin hills and forests and so I take her on a segment of the Ice Age Trail that weaves its way to Devil’s Lake – to get a little bit of everything into the mix – the woods, the hills and lake.





We reach Devil's Lake late in the day, but I am nonetheless surprised at how empty it still feels. The lake side boats are laid out for the first time this week-end, but no one is using them now.





In another few weeks, this beach will be full of "city people" -- from as close as Baraboo, and Madison, to as far as Chicago. Though even then, it's always possible to find a quiet, contemplative spot with nothing to rattle the peace that extends over the clear water and the the forested bluffs.






We do not finish the hike until 7. The sun is low, but still warm. A honey warm of golden green tones.





If the trees aren’t fully green, they are at least delicately green. And on the forest floor, fern fronds show the baby fuzz of their delicate green bodies. Nothing is as it was two months ago, two weeks ago. And that’s a good thing.

week-end interlude

When a daughter visits, time takes on different dimensions. You move from now, to how it was once, to how it will be two years from now and then you start all over again. And so the day fills.

I have a daughter here for the weekend and predictably, I have little to add to Ocean tonight. I’ll leave you with a picture of blooms from the morning market and a promise to come back to something of substance tomorrow.

and now it’s May

A last long spell in my office today. I’m packing up books and materials to take with me, I'm saying good bye to my office neighbors, I'm heading home. It’s time for me to open up my summer office. Which, at least in spring, follows me and mixes freely with many days of no work at all. Or, no class-based work. Instead -- a hope for progress on my Great Writing Project.

Good-bye Bascom Hill – site of so many photos when nothing else in the course of my work day captured my eye.



boy, girl, dog


Hello open slate.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts for the first of May:

One comes from a graduating student who stopped by my office this afternoon. He said that, due to the economy, his employer deferred the starting date of his new job until January. Suddenly he has free time. I feel the pressure of spending it well! – he tells me.

Me too. I feel the pressure of spending these coming months well.

My second thought comes from my wise and wonderful office neighbor. I have often started my day by sharing slight worries with her. She’s just so good at diffusing anxiety that it’s become rather a habit. Her best piece of advice came today and I think it’ll hold me for at least the one or two months that I’m away. I leave you with it:

My very old aunt said to me – you shouldn’t waste time worrying. Things we fret about do not happen. The bad stuff comes from stuff we never worried about.


In the meantime, the sun sets on forests that are almost green, fields that are almost planted.

lemon without the lemons

Suddenly, there’s very little time. Exams to hand in, student letters to write, seedlings to plant, house to prepare, hikes to plan – this is just the beginning of a list that I set for myself for the next few days.

I could, of course, do none of it now. I could take things in stride, in a Mediterranean fashion. Spring could be, for me, a time to sit back, to exhale, in a leisurely manner.

I could, in other words, fold my paws and hang back (for the mouse to spring out of the wood pile), like Larry here:




But that’s not me.

I figure – Larry, he can wait. His mice come randomly, year round. Mine do not.

Tomorrow, we leap into May. Madness for me. A wonderful, busy, risky, adventurous, lemon budding madness.

differences

The difference between being 56 and 26 is that at 56, I finish a good book and I think – hmm, let me send it to someone who may enjoy it. At 26 I would have thought – a nice addition to my collection. I’ll savor it sometime in the future. (The adding of books to your collection was very very cool.)

At 56, there isn’t much that I want to collect. Living in a very small condo leads me to buy only things that someone can swallow and digest, hopefully within the next week. Sometimes, I imagine that I could purge even more of the nonessentials that I have and that my closets would become almost bare and I would live out of the equivalent of a suitcase. Okay, two suitcases. Winter clothes use up space.


I like small, empty spaces. With sunlight streaming in.

Which, of course, brings me to the matter of the writer's shed. For newcomers to Ocean – Ed has been building a shed for me on his property, where I could spend long stretches of time writing. Last summer we cleared space, and with the help of Amos, the shed went up. Here it is – a simple, airy building.





The shed project was stalled because Ed began to understand (finally) that this particular writer is attached to the concept of running water within the premises she inhabits. It could be that the first years of life, spent in my grandparents’ house in a village in Poland (where there was no electricity, no running water, and certainly no WiFi) really took its toll. And so now Ed is lost in the slow process of imagining how water might be introduced without great cost or effort. Everything is on hold until the creative juices push him forward. I understand that. My own creative impulse is equally unpredictable.

Meanwhile, I noted that the truck farmers working the land next to Ed's are also in the process of putting up a shed. Daughter passes nails to father, father hammers away.





The difference between the farmers’ shed and the writer's shed? Well, of course, there’s the intent behind it: ours is for daydreaming and, when the impulse strikes, writing. Theirs is for storing tools and creating shelter in case of a cloudbreak (I’m guessing here). Still, to me, the overriding difference is this -- theirs will be done much, much faster than ours. Which is a good thing, considering.

bluebells

Ever since my grandfather gave me a book of Polish songs in 1960 and said to me – sing from it when you’re away, I’ve been inclined to fall back on the advice when I’m not quite ready to pop back into my life in the new country.

But, the truth is, I can’t mope much on a Tuesday. Especially the last teaching day of the semester. Time is tight. Can’t indulge emotions and ephemeral desires.


I bike to work (against a piercing wind and unexpected road closures) and give a fleeting thought to how pretty a lake looks when it’s choppy.





Less pretty are the trees, which still seem to me more bare than not bare. I miss the blooming chestnuts in Lazienki Park. And there’s no point in looking for forget-me-nots. They don’t grow wild here like they do in Poland. They don’t even grow unwild. People here mustn’t like them as much as I do.

One has to make do with Virginia bluebells.





I teach two classes of dedicated Family Law students, go home and collapse.