passing through

We are in DC for less than a day. With a long drive ahead of us on Sunday, we shouldn’t linger.

But we do. It’s a sunny, warm Sunday, a holiday for families. If beaches are at their best when empty, DC is best when the vast green common spaces are filled with families.

Ed and I leave an apartment full of still sleeping people, pick up a latte at a café (where, too, people watching is completely satisfying...)





…and proceed toward the Mall.

At the Museum of American History, he gets lost in the exhibits. It is at once sweet and frustrating to be with him in these places. The classic cereal box reader should not be let loose in rooms full of informational tableaus. But I find that of all the museums here, this one is such a perfect match to what’s outside. Washington is the one city in America that, in my mind, wears its past openly, at every turn. A tumultuous past, sad and thrilling, all in one fell swoop. And so I am again looking at meticulously put together exhibits that churn through communities, inventions, presidents, inaugurations – like packed pages of a thick, bold, colorful magazine.


Outside, the day is equally dazzling. We do a shortened stroll past my favorites – up the hill with the Washington Monument, down to the Monument to the Second World War, and finally, along the Reflecting Pool toward Mr Lincoln. All the while watching Mother’s Day unfold on this magnificent spring day.






















We meet my daughter and her visiting friends for brunch – a late, long, wonderful brunch which cannot end because when it does, Ed and I have to find our truck, pack it up and head north.

One more minute, just one more story from across the table, one more bite, a swallow, a glance her way…





… and off we go. Six hours later, we unload in Danbury, Connecticut. We’re here for just one night, so that we can go back to Brewster and look through Ed’s family’s storage unit again. The old truck is holding up well. It’s time to load it up and slowly meander back toward the Midwest.

from the Outer Banks: the last laugh

We wake up to someone cranking his van outside our motel door. Motel life. I’d forgotten the quirky bits and pieces of it. [I actually love our place on Hatteras Island (Cape Pines Motel). But you have to give up on the idea that a room should have a view. The best views are toward a tiny swimming pool. Our window looks out on the power station. And of course, on the nose of our pick up truck. But, oh, is this place a bargain! And is it ever clean! But it's the location that really pushes it to the top of the heap for me. Here, at Cape Pines, you feel the pace of island life.]

More noise. Ed asks if it’s raining. I look outside.
No… I think you’re hearing the wind.

It’s the wind alright. Positively howling by the time we’re up and moving.

It’s our last day, not even a full day, and I want to go up to the top of the Hatteras lighthouse. Tallest in the country! No. Too windy. The National Park Service staff is insistent. You have no idea how much stronger the winds are up there!

I believe them. They are forceful enough even at the base. You could push a plane into the air with this kind of a gust.

We're satisfied to poke around at the visitors' center. We watch a mom take a group photo of high school kids on a field trip. How many photos were framed over the decades in front of this candy striped tower? Will these kids look quaintly clothed to their grandchildren, thumbing through an album fifty years from now?





I suggest we hike to the elbow bend of Hatteras Island. I read that it's the most south-eastern tip of the country. A funny characterization. Not southern enough, not eastern enough, but put them together and you have a winner!

We step out on the beach and we are hit by sand. Needles stinging every exposed part of your body. The day is slightly hazy, I admit it, but I swear you can see the movement of air as the wind pushes sand back into the water. Who is the powerful one now -- the ocean, or this blast of air that makes us look down to avoid a direct hit? Today, the wind has the last laugh. Even the birds appear to be struggling against its force.










We’re at the truckers’ entrance to the water. The fishermen are here, even though, I’m told, the fish aren’t biting today.











And because it’s the week-end, their families are here as well.





But we can’t hike down to the bend. The beach has been closed off just there. The National Park Service has determined that there are reasons to keep people out of the southeastern most tip of the country. It’s breeding time for a number of birds. Sea turtles, too. We're awed by these natural habitats. We're intruders. We turn around and head back to our truck.

We can hike down a path to the cape and bypass the protected beach area – I say to Ed.
The path isn’t hard to find, but at its end we encounter the same closures. Ah well. You could say that here, just at the edge of the beach, I am standing at the southeastern most part of the US. Bur for where the turtles and birds mate and reproduce.





Again we retreat. The birds and animals watch us leave.






The warm wind and moist air make us feel clammy and hot. Ed is more than ready for a swim. But I resist. It’s as if there’s too much to watch out here on this, the most beautiful beach on the continent. No, not people watch. Even on the week-end, the place is nearly empty. But the blowing sand, the movement of gulls, the dazzling waters of the Atlantic – they all grab my attention. As Ed plunges in grinning with pleasure, I stay satisfied with letting the waves crash against my legs, washing off the layer of fine sand.

Again the birds watch our antics and retreat if we move too close to their space.





And now we feel truly satisfied. We are done for now. The Outer Banks aren’t discoverable, really, not by people who breeze in and out like we do. Yet, in just four days, the islands have presented us with wildly different images of what it’s like to wake up to a spring morning here. We've tasted so much! Brilliant sunshine, stormy clouds, gentle breezes, gusty winds – we’ve had them all. Time to head north.






We leave Hatteras Island late in the afternoon. Our drive takes us past Kitty Hawk (still on the NC Outer Banks, but further north) and Ed suggests a quick stop at the memorial to the Wright Brothers, who launched the first heavier than air powered plane from here in 1903.

The monument is beautiful – perched high on a sand dune (stabilized by local grasses), much like the sand dune that was here a century back. I watch a boy run up to get a closer look.





The brothers came here from Ohio because the Outer Banks offered all that they needed for their experiment: a good wind, a soft, sandy base and vast open space. And as they launched their successful flight, a local photographer caught the moment.





There is a replica of the plane here. Indeed, you can stand behind it and put yourself back in time, camera poised, pushing your windblown hair off your face, waiting to see if this time, the plane will stay airborne...

Ed wants to study the exhibits inside the visitors' center. But I nudge him to hurry. We have a long drive ahead of us. And we have yet to eat a meal today. Still, we are the last to leave. As the guard gets ready to close the door after us, I ask him – why did one of the Wright brothers die so young? Typhoid. He ate some contaminated seafood. But not here. Further north.

We drive on as the sun sets somewhere toward the Midwest. We stop only for a minute -- to
pick up some fruit at a roadside market (becasue, of course, Saturday is market day!).






Five hours later, we're in Washington DC. We grab a late night pizza at a favorite U Street eatery and crash at my daughter’s home for the night. Happy Mother’s Day indeed! Now if only my youngest one wasn’t so far away!

from the Outer Banks of North Carolina: the ocean and us

Sometimes, here on Hatteras Island, I think – we get it. The ocean is powerful. We are mere grains of sand. It can move a village in a day. It takes us years to build one. Yes, mere crystals of sand.

Other times, I think we don’t want to remember. The ocean is our toy. We work hard year round. We come to its shores to release all those tensions. Water is cool. This is our playground.

On the Outer Banks, the further north you get, the more of a playground feel there is to the islands.

On the southern end of Hatteras, where we are, you don’t see it as much. People fish, sure. Trucks with fishing rods stuck to the nose are as common as SUVs are in America's suburbs. At the coffee shop, the salesclerk talks about going out to fish that afternoon. The weather is warm, sticky even. The winds have died down. Good fishing day. But this isn’t merely play. It’s a way of life.





Ed and I head up north a little ways, because that’s where the rentals are. He had wanted to take out a Windrider (a trimaran) – to try it out for possible future use. But the boat got sold and so we were left to check out the just opening rental shops that are putting out their windsurfers and the occasional Hobie Cat for the summer people.

In the village of Salvo, we find a Hobie Cat, ready for sailing. Or, at least, this little person is ready to let us take her out.





But her dad comes in and tells us the boat is spoken for, at least for the next couple of hours. Come back at 3. In the meantime, you can hang out at the Atlantic beach, just at the pier. You're lucky, you know. It's been too windy. This is the first day that I'm launching the Cat.

This baffles me. Ed worries about too little wind. The island person worries about too much.
You want your boat to come back. Ed tells me. Too much wind for him is too dangerous.


We find the pier alright. But it charges a dollar for a walk and ten for a fishing afternoon and so, after watching someone nail a tail to a post, we move on.





Salvo has many, many holiday rentals. All built on stilts so that the mad stormy waters can take their anger out on the sands and leave the structure alone. In the Midwest, we hide from storms below ground. Here, they run away by building up.





Every property has a for rent sign and many have a for sale sign. The prices are steep and the bragging is bloated. “Ocean view” – for any place that shows even a speck of water, no matter how obstructed.

The sands are forever shifting here and the beach is slowly taking over the first row of homes. Instead of shoveling snow, you shovel sand off your driveway.





Sand. Everywhere there is sand. The breeze kicks it up. The humidity is high today. The sand sticks to you. Inside the houses, they must surely have given up. Sand in the bedroom, sand in the kitchen.





Too close! What price for that water view? So that the homes will someday look like this forest that once stood here defiantly?





We walk for several miles up the beach and back again. The wind is picking up again and the surfers are out. Here’s a water enthusiast, sitting at a spot where civilization and oceanfront collide.





The water pushes forward, moving, crashing. Bringing to shore fantastic large shells -- a conch, the pearly oyster. I leave them behind. I’m not a collector. Besides, these look beautiful here, on the beach, where the water gently washes their form again and again.













On the other side of Highway 12, the sound side, the water is calmer and here is where scores of windsurfers come to play in the wind. I tell Ed he should do this. Someday. Next time? For now, we are happy to go off in the catamaran. We are not above playing in the sea. We are summer people.





The wind is perfect. In Brittany, where we last sailed together, the puffs of wind made the boat go from a crawl to a gallop (can you tell that I’m basically a landlubber?) in just seconds. Here, the speed is consistent and the sail sets well the entire time we are out. The water is so warm that I let my feet soak as we zip around the buoys marking traps for crabs (I'm guessing here). We lose our bearings briefly, then find our markings on the shore again. Out from the water, land appears very insignificant.

Ed never stops grinning.


We bring the boat in and Ed pauses to chat to the owner. They winter down in Costa Rica and rent boats here in the summer. They have been doing this for 23 years.
If business gets better, I’d like to split the year half and half (they home school their girl to make this work).
How is it so far this year?
Too early to tell.

Oh, the ever optimistic islanders! They think and work in ways that we can only pretend to grasp.

I know that Ed would like to swim, but I’m hungry and so we put off more water play until the next morning. We head back to the Captain’s Table and we eat our last dinner here. North Carolina clam chowder (it’s a clear broth), a glass of North Carolina wine, North Carolina shrimp and North Carolina crab cakes.









On Saturday we think we should pack up and head north. We did all that we set out to do here. Maybe it's time to get moving. Maybe.

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.