Outer Banks

When I die (at some hopefully distant time), most of my ashes will probably be scattered in the favorite places of my adopted home, the Pacific Northwest.  However, two handfuls should be saved for locations back east.  One of those spots, Wind Rock, a lookout off the Appalachia Trail in Virginia, may require my will to have a topo map included.  The other spot may or may not still exist, as it is a fragile barrier island off the coast of North Carolina.  Hatteras.  Only a few feet above sea level at its highest point and a few hundred yards wide at its narrowest, it is vulnerable to the ever changing whim of ocean and wind.

After a five-year hiatus, I finally was able to return to the Outer Banks.  Although we stayed on Bodie-Not-Really-An-Island, we did make it to Hatteras briefly.  Long enough to enjoy the empty beach even in what was still peak season for tourists.  

The beach is always changing.  My parents preceded the first stoplight when they started visiting in the sixties.  Now there is a five lane highway on Bodie Island.  Where there were once dunes, strip malls now exists.  Where there were once beach houses, now there is only the beach.  Inlets are dredged to keep them open and the sand is used to fill inlets cut by storms across narrow parts of the island.  The "natives," old North Carolina bankers with their distinct accent that is a mix of Judy Dench and Dolly Parton, are slowing going elsewhere or becoming assimilated.  And yet, the Outer Bankers are the same as they have been since they first appeared.  The only difference is that now people are there to try to force them to remain as they are currently.


But they won't.  I don't know if they'll exist by the time I'm ready to have my ashes scattered there.  But if history repeats itself, usually when one inlet closes, another one opens elsewhere.

The pictures above were all taken by my mother in January and February of this year.

American Bittern.

These pictures of the sunset were all taken by my mother on this most recent trip.