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September 6

The morning when I am stirred by the breeze over Cape Hatteras is among the best of my young life. Obviously, Brian is already up, standing by the van's wide open side door.

“C’mon Sleeper,” he coaxes, leaning into the van and whispering in my ear. "You don't want to miss this."

  I inhale the salty waves breaking against the beach behind me. Brian is filling his cargo pockets with juice boxes and muffins. When I sit up, he pulls the sheet off me, folds it into a square and tucks it under his arm. 

“C’mon,” he says again, heading for the steps.

I zip a hoodie over my pajamas and step out of the van for the first time with bare feet—I take a minute to swirl them around in the sand before following him. At the top of the steps I pause as I did yesterday. It's just a little breath-taking. The sun is not yet showing but the sky is infused with the color of apricot. There are a few walkers at the ocean’s edge--one with a coffee mug, one with an Irish Setter, come in pajamas like me--and busy sand pipers dart back and forth. 

I fall onto the sheet as Brian spreads it on the sand and stick a straw in my juice box, slurping while a slip of orange flame peeks over the waves at the horizon. There's no sound except the thin ripple of wind and sea. I don’t move an inch. The sun rises halfway out of the water and more of its color seeps into the sky around it. Brian sits next to me, all cuddly. When the sun finally floats over the horizon, leaving its apricot streaks to toss in the burnished waves, I stand, stretch, and suggest a walk south along the waves. The air has that smell: a day at the shore that is not yet hot but will be, salt drying on all the pieces of ocean that are exposed at the edge of the tide.

We stroll toward a 10-ft. square that has been marked with flimsy waist-high sticks and tied across with string. Hanging from the string are handwritten signs that call this a Threatened and Endangered Species Enclosure. There is No Entry, by order of the National Park Service, but this set up can’t be enclosing its occupants at all. Dozens of diminutive, opaque crabs emerge from trembling mounds of sand. They look around with their black olive-slice eyes (the only parts of them really distinguishable from the sand), scuttle across a few inches and withdraw back into the next buried passage. We walk about a mile, and on the way back we recognize the camouflaged creatures moving everywhere, undisturbed, and I wonder, what invisible enemy is endangering them? 

 

An hour later, I am reminded as I wander to the showers that the Cape Hatteras campground has it all, and we have it almost all to ourselves this Thursday, as sharks and hurricanes loom. It’s hard to not spend a whole lazy day here, but that is not the plan. I encourage myself into forward momentum, to wash off the pool chlorine, to pack up the van, to ride away from this glimpse of paradise without dwelling on the door closing. The next one will open, and then another, and another, as the van rolls south. We won’t leave the state today, and we’ll spend more than half of our in-van time with the engine off, ferrying between broken tips of the Outer Banks.

First on the agenda is a stop at the nation’s tallest brick lighthouse. Its parking lot is sandy and surrounded by hedges. Beyond the thicket, the Hatteras lighthouse looms above, its fat black and white stripes spiraling 208 feet into the sky, like a giant barbershop pole with an iron crown. We move in for a closer look. One plaque says that the beacon, whose light is visible twenty miles out to sea, has helped sailors avoid the shallow sandbars of the Diamond Shoals since the last century. It is made of 1,250,000 bricks, which originally had no pilings beneath them, and thus it had to be transplanted from further up the beach two years ago when the creeping Atlantic became a threat to its structural integrity. How they pulled that off, I think squinting up to the top, must have been Giza-style engineering trickery.  

Another plaque invites visitors up to the lookout for an unsurpassable view. It warns, though, to: seriously consider your health and physical ability to climb 257 steps, equal to a 20 story building. It could be very warm and humid inside the lighthouse.

We consult each other with droopy eyes.

“I don’t know about that,” says Brian.

“Are you sure,” I ask, thinking this might be something meaningful to him. Fully interact with the landmark, like we did at Kitty Hawk yesterday, get some exercise beyond flexing his ankle over the accelerator. He is the athlete in this family, keeping intrinsically lazy me on track, and I appreciate the kick start more often than I resent it. If he said he wanted to climb this lighthouse, I would. I would try. But he doesn’t, and I try to dismiss the amalgamation of relief and disappointment that froths within. I would blame him if I got blistered or tired, or blame him if I missed something fun, and this is an injustice I don't care to own up to.     

Beyond the lighthouse there continues to be water on both sides of the road. We pass smaller and smaller "towns", a few more fishing outfits and a few more ash-shingled houses, dozen-windowed boxes balanced on pilings. At the end of the road, the end of the whole island, is a ferry landing so unassuming (compared to most of the ones in Washington), I don’t even realize that’s what it is until Brian is giving three dollars to the attendant, who looks like a cop wearing a khaki uniform and eating a red licorice vine. He nods us forward.

The ferry is more like a barge. About thirty cars crowd into an open deck around a coffee stand and restroom. Everybody gets out of their vehicle and stands at the railing to chat, wind fluttering ponytails and collars. We pull slowly away from the houses and fishing boats, and pass a jetty covered with pelican squatters. Some of them ascend the rocks with a fish wriggling visibly down their bulging gullets. Our craft picks up speed when the land runs out, but we can see ahead of us where another piece of land begins, again peppered with nothing but birds. I guess this ferry doesn’t fill with commuters every morning and evening, because there’s nowhere to commute to; very different from the busy flocks of passengers on the big efficient boats of Puget Sound. I realize how attached I’ve already become to this new water, and wonder more about what real life is like here. Where do people work? Where do they buy cars? Do they watch TV? What happens in a hurricane, what happens after a high school football game? Where do they (if they do) go on vacation?

The ruminating morphs somehow into a sting of anxiety under my left ribs. It's my new thing this summer, I guess; looking closely at life makes me suspect my heart or lungs are failing. I grip the rail I’m leaning against and look for Brian. He’s up at the bow with his video camera. That footage is going to be so boring, I think. Without the three dimensions of atmosphere there’s no way to capture this ride—it’s just crunchy wind noise and gray water. My heart skips off the track for a beat. I will it back to a resting pace, but as I'll come to learn, concentrating on it has the opposite effect. I count seagulls and stretch my face into the spray. Brian returns and alerts me that the ride is almost over. 

My fret recedes as we follow the other cars off the ferry onto Ocracoke Island. There’s not a big sandy beach in this compact village, but rather a marina and a promenade with picnic tables and bright grass; the water laps against a concrete wall. Beyond the waterfront is a neighborhood whose antique and curiosity shops appear to summon a slightly more sophisticated crowd than Cape Hatteras did, but we blend in well enough. This is just an intermission for us on the way to Cedar Island, where we’ll camp again before the Outer Banks swell back into the mainland. The next ferry is two hours away, so we leave the van near the front of the waiting line and head into town on foot. The temperature has climbed into the 90's, and we take shelter under the palms, oaks, orchids and willows, all casting oases of shade along the sidewalk. 

In a grocery store we poke through the produce and the novel brands of bread, butter, chips and cereal. Metal ducts and wood beams are exposed at the ceiling and the cracked concrete floor is puddled with run-off from the freezers. I like this so much better than Safeway. We are looking for lunch, and to replenish the drink and snack provisions that have dwindled from the stuffed sacks we had behind the seats in Memphis—we gather pistachios, sunflower seeds, grapes, kumquats, jerky, cheddar popcorn, Corona, limeade; only what fits into two bags each since we're on foot.

And still the bags grow heavy on our walk back to the ferry line, as the sun finds its peak and there is no longer any refuge under the trees. Perspiration gathers at my hairline. I think about how this would be better if I were riding a bicycle with a basket, or better yet, if I were in the back of pedi-cab. But neither avail themselves. I trudge along looking down at the sidewalk, instead of around at all the lucky people living here, like I did on the first leg of the walk.

“Why so quiet?” Brian wants to know. He’s testing whether the exertion has sunk my spirits already, and by the tone of voice I can tell his response to that would not quite be compassion.

“I don’t know. Just a little tired,” I raise passive eyes and muster a half smile. Just a little agitated, listening cautiously to my heart, and still perplexed as to why. But talking about it out loud doesn't help either, so I stay quiet, and presume he stays dissatisfied with me. We make it back to the ferry just before we both trip over the line into outwardly blaming each other for something. What a difference a few hours makes on this pendulum.

Fortunately, the van has been waiting for us in some shade. After re-loading the cooler I don’t even get into the front seat. While Brian drives onto the ferry I arrange pillows at the tail end of the bed, situating my book and the plastic net of grapes within easy reach. This ferry is larger than the last one, but designed the same: an open deck three cars wide surrounding the enclosed concessions. Once parked, Brian slides the side door open and climbs in back with me. We have a good position on the perimeter; the boat has no real wall to hold us in, just a curb and one shoulder-high rail bar, so we can almost touch every surge and sparkle of the water. Soon we're clipping along, watching the clusters of land fade away and surprised when we can see no more of them. In the Northwest there's no ferry ride that's not always in view of solid ground. I wonder how close the sharks are now.

“We haven’t been in the middle of the water like this since Acapulco,” I observe. That was the most extravagant trip we took together, more than three years ago. We stayed in a cliff-side villa with a private swimming pool and tropical fruit delivered to a box in the wall every morning. Brian chartered us a private fishing excursion. I remember being scared once we were out of the bay and the shore disappeared, and not saying so. We caught three sailfish almost as big as me; I reeled one of them in myself while the guides yelled “sit down, lady!” and buckled me into my chair. That’s the farthest out I’ve been.

“I know; water everywhere at home, but not like this.”

“And you can’t tell it’s this big from the map,” I report. “We’re still inside the sound, just going to another little strip of island.”

“Farther away than it seems…” He sinks back into his pillow and takes off his t-shirt to drape it over his eyes. I stare out the door, letting more of the resuscitative spray mist my face each time the ferry dips, and then I put my head down next to his. These could be the best nap conditions ever, if I really were tired. Instead I read my book, savor the grapes, and listen to Brian’s even breath fill the space between the splashes.

Four chapters into a biography of Paul Bowles, we’ve slowed back down and I sit up to see land out the frame of the open door. There’s a modest lighthouse, a rocky cove, a bait shop/deli. Soon we’re off the water and driving parallel to it again, on another floating bridge surrounded by marshes. Then the marshes turn into whitewashed homes and yards alive with flower and shell gardens, bright stucco offices of the dentist, accountant, palm reader. Atlantic Beach is still characterized by open space, a mood of year-round vacation, and a sense of thorough salt-coating. I find the shelter in it. As I swim my arm out the window and watch the town blur by, I am no longer distracted by my heartbeat, determined to cocoon inside this halcyon time.

We're nearing tonight's campground when here come a couple of the Pigeon Forge exploded-cartoon adventure golf parks. Then I spy a restaurant shaped like a clipper ship, with wooden flags and a marquee shouting:        

Thursday is All You Can Eat Fish Buffet!

CrabLobsterClamCrayfishHalibutSoleSnapperShrimpScallopsSharkCodCatfishandMore

 

That place will provide tonight’s dinner, for sure. Next to it there’s a block-long store, two stories high and Big Bird yellow, with multiple signs advertising special deals and new designers. All the giant store sells is beach stuff. I've noticed these phenomena, usually called Wings for some reason, all along the Banks, and I am fascinated. Compelled to stop actually, but adventure shopping would definitely not be a fun idea for Brian right now.   

Salter Path campground occupies both sides of the road. The side we’re sleeping on is the ocean side—another night with nothing but the Atlantic behind us—and the other side is the Pamlico Sound side. A dock and boat launch are over there, as well as the pool, because that’s where the long-term residents are. The office rents every piece of aquatic equipment you can think of. The manager is full of stories about his travels to the Pacific Northwest, but we finally get the map from him and wind through his wooded paths. The trees break into a clearing which ends in a cliff. Today the van’s designated site is above the ocean, with a long stairway leading down. I can’t believe we keep getting such first class spots. Brian puts the van in park and nods. “I make calls,” he says. He does have a flair for making reservations when that’s an option. It’s when he has to improvise that things get tricky.

 We decide to rent a kayak, which might make up for the 257 missed steps at the Hatteras lighthouse. It counts as exercise and puts us back on the water, though since I am spooked by the sharks, Brian agrees to go out on the Sound side. We carry our blue boat on our heads down to the dock. On the way we pass trailers that have been parked here as long as we’ve been alive, with stubby fences, flower pots and even mailboxes assembled around them. Some have patches of Astroturf outside the door and birdhouses hanging from the awnings; one has a tire swing on the tree beside it. Pastel painted signs announce the residents’ names and slogans like life’s a beach.   

“What a place,” I call out from under the kayak.

“Awesome,” Brian echoes.

There’s a cool blond guy on the dock waiting to help us into the kayak. It’s always an awkward maneuver for the less coordinated, but I make it, and with a push of the oar we’re off. Close to the shore per my request, we paddle north alongside the campground, checking out all the vacationers. Beyond Salter Path there are fish trap junkyards and the back borders of golf courses. The water is glassy green; the remains of another old pier poke out of the reeds. We encounter other kayakers, some serious about their paddling, some less so. A slight tension pervades our craft, as Brian would like to explore further out into the sound but I remain unreasonably wary, so every time he steers us further away from the land I fall silent and stop paddling, and he steers us back in with a loud sigh. I just don’t see what’s not to enjoy right here. The water begins to twinkle as evening descends; pelicans dive around us and snowy egrets strike poses in the shallows.

At the first rumbles of hunger we turn back for the dock. Emerging with wet bottoms from paddling through speed boat wakes, we are dry and dusty by the time we return the kayak to the front desk and dash back across the busy street to our home base. I change into jeans while Brian chats with neighbors who are grilling hot dogs and playing gin rummy; then it’s off to the fish festival.

Every table in the restaurant is made to fit a party of eight. My paper placemat has a shark theme: photos and vital stats for every species. The hostess brings water in red plastic keg cups, a stack of warm plates, paper napkins, and a scrap bucket. At the buffet, crowds of sunburned children must be muscled past to reach the dozens of hot trays under white lamps: steamed vegetables, rice pilaf, cheesy potatoes, and then the fish. Everything listed on the marquee and more indeed, baked, broiled, basted and fried. I go for light colored species like sole and halibut smothered with cream sauce, while Brian is all about the shellfish. We empty five plates between us and he fills the scrap bucket with brittle red shells. While he poses his prettiest crawfish on the edge of the bucket for a picture, I make one last trip to the soft serve ice cream station. Then we have to sit in our spacious booth for another half hour, smoking and tonguing the remnants of fishy flesh between our teeth, until we can move.

“Maybe a little more ‘exercise’,” Brian makes quotes with his hands but smiles at me, leaning back against the van in the buffet parking lot, “what do you think?”

“Adventure Golf!” I pipe, purposefully childlike to lock in the light mood. We have not been plowing down the road all day long, we have been here, just soaking up the Atlantic island living, and we can certainly make another lovely night of it. 

The closest fun zone has a “crashed” helicopter and a maze of clay colored “mountains.” The story of the adventure is written on the “cave” walls and signs at every putt.  There was a robbery, a buried treasure, an expedition, no survivors, a map left behind. The sun is going down and the breeze is picking up, so the temperature is now perfect, the kind of outside evening you’d only enjoy a few times a year in Seattle. Amazingly, there is no other group of adventurer golfers lingering ahead of us or pushing from behind. I am transported to a fairy-tale first date night, even in the midst of being confined to close quarters and no other company than this guy for almost a week. When he reaches the treasure first, I congratulate him, no sign of the sore loser I sometimes appear to be.

My disposition is confounding—my eyes are teary on the quiet ride back to camp, but Brian can't see because it’s dark when we get to Salter Path. More crowded than Hatteras was last night, ours is the only empty spot. Actually, to my delight, it is occupied by a bunny rabbit, which I get out of the van to nudge away. Wind chimes tinkle off the eaves of RVs, kids run amok, campfires and laughter blaze everywhere. I grab the sleeping bag and put my other arm through Brian’s. He winks. He guides us with a flashlight, stepping sideways down the steep wooden staircase to the beach. There’s not much distance between the cliff face and the incoming tide, but we burrow out a spot and contemplate the stars, which are infinitely clear, and still backward. We are angled to the south now, captivated by how far behind us Orion and the Dippers are. A satellite arcs overhead, red lighthouse pulses are visible at both ends of the beach, and the green blips of yachts or tankers bob on the black horizon. Otherwise it’s just us and a crescent of sand and an explosion of stars. We could have sex here, if we were that couple; we could sleep here if it weren’t for the incoming tide. Instead we take it all back to the van with us, hidden amidst the happy voices of the campground.