Hello

I seem to have writer's block.  Possibly even photography block.  What I am clearly having is hip block, as my left one is experiencing technical difficulties keeping me off the beach for a bit.  Still, there are tons of images taken since our arrival at my disposal, lots of experiences not shared and ideas not brought forth to my blog.  My poor, sad, neglected blog that so desperately needs a change.

We are fortunate to be living close to a beach.  Photographing sunrises has been a favorite activity of mine since our arrival last March.  Walking along this pier, watching the fishermen and women hauling in all manner of creatures (and letting most of them go), staring at the waves crashing beneath me, marveling at cannonball jellyfishes, sharks and stingrays cruising around, avoiding the pelicans and gulls who think they're going to get fed, then leaving through the store, buying locally made ice cream, is such a treat.

Riding the ferry brings intense joy.  No matter how many times we passenger the Cape Fear River ferry to Southport and back again the trip never grows boring.  Never.  Ever.  Such a peaceful calm.  Watching the pelicans, gulls and terns swoop and dive for lunch, and the gulls pacing the ferry hoping for a handout is so cool.  Occasionally dolphins will mirror the ferry for a bit before disappearing toward the mouth of the river into the ocean.  Once, we spied a bald eagle.  There are always sailboats, fishing boats and even ships to watch.

The salt marshes lend an exotic, mysterious, amazingly beautiful palette of seasonal colors.  Bright greens in the spring, purples and browns toward summer ending in the luscious golds of autumn.  I am in love with the salt marshes with its crabs and grackles, herons and egrets, snakes and oysters, dragonflies and damselflies.  The salt marshes are the magical fringe between brackish waters and the maritime forest housing creatures and plants unique to that environment. 

The coolest thing EVER is that we have our own turtle nest incubating at the end of our walkway to the beach!  These little guys are due to hatch sometime in October.  I hope and pray I will be here for their birth and slipping and sliding into the ocean.  How incredible!  What a miracle! 

So I'm pondering my blog again and considering even changing to Wordpress, thanks to a creative genius friend and blogger who encourages that direction.  Blogger always seems to have spacing problems, unless it's the blog-ee (me!) and not Blogger's fault.  No matter how tight I make spaces in between photos and text there are sometimes these large spaces that I can't make go away.  But, since it's just a blog let's just Let It Be.  For now.  So that's my random blog post for now!  I hope you are all doing well - I really miss you all!

Brought to you by the letters "E" and "A"....

After a five week journey to North Alabama helping family through surgeries and sneaking in a few visits along the way, I'm back at the beach.  There's an odd disconnect one experiences after being gone for so long.  In order to find myself again there has been lots of sleeping and simply "being," a couple of early evening Toddies on the Beach with the hubby, and yesterday...my first beach walk.

We've had an abundance of rainfall the past few days.  Along with the rain drops came lightning and thunder, north winds and heavy seas.  After the heat of early August I welcomed this change with open arms...and bare feet for my first serious walk.  My goal was the green rocks of Fort Fisher.  However, the universe had something completely different in mind for me.

Trash

Stepping onto the wet sand off our walkway the first thing I noticed were lines of beach flotsam and jetsam deposited by the sea.  It was just past high tide, and these markers were high spots of deposits.  There, amid the bits of shells, seaweed and bits of grasses were cigarette butts.  Leaning down to pick up the first one I spotted 5 more.  This continued for about a hundred yards south.

I never made it to the green rocks. After about 20 minutes my collecting bag was nearly full.  Back aching, hip complaining I turned back to do a sweep on the way back and collected even more.  North winds blowing my hair out of my eyes I could see more trash, even watching the waves deposit more as I walked.  It was staggering, the amount of garbage.  A personal best...er, worst for Kure Beach.  More tourists on a smoking beach = more cigarette butts.  

Kure Beach Trash Pickup: August 15, 2013;  1.4 pounds of trash
1 hour over a few hundred yards.  Mid-afternoon, after storms and rainfall at high tide with heavy seas. 

10 Children's toys
Over 50 bits and pieces of paper and plastic
2 tubes of chapstick
8 plastic cigarillo tips
1 complete empty bottle of water
1 Landshark beer bottle cap
1 plastic spoon
The letters "E" and "A" from something
1 quarter
22 bottle caps
448 cigarette butts

That last one bears repeating:  448 CIGARETTE BUTTS

This is plain nasty.  I'm going to buy medical gloves for these beach pickups it's becoming so gross.  This time I did receive pay for my efforts - one quarter. 

I leave you with a pretty photograph of how a beach should look, sans trash:

...isn't this better?

Beach Colors

There's nothing more colorful than a beach town.  People have to paint more often because of the sunshine, salty air and constant winds.  Here, their chosen colors are bright and cheerful, boldly standing out in the clear sunshine, stark against bright white clouds and blue skies. 

Bright colors lure in patrons more readily than do dark, brooding colors for who wants to brood at a beach?  People themselves don straw hats bestowed with flowing scarves (protection, of course), loud t-shirts and shorts.  They fly colorful kites, lie upon neon beach towels, schlep dazzling totes overflowing with flashy beach goodies that rivals a box of 64 Crayola crayons.  Their very skin glows from the sun's tint, shiny with oils and lotions.  One finds more smiles per capita at any beach town.  One simply can't be brooding and frowning at a beach.  It's simply not possible.  (...cranky children are the exception...)

Salty air, fresh seafood, children laughing, sunshine blazing, gulls calling, waves crashing - a beach town has a way of lightening ones load, carving out grins and cleansing lungs and souls. 

After living in such a bright, happy place can I ever go back to town living?  We are pondering that very thing.  Should we stay or should we go? 

I miss some things about town living, but would feel a hole left by the colorful houses and palm trees.  Most of all, I would mourn the loss of vast stretches of sunshine and clouds.  Here, my soul has been lifted and my heart has found a new song. 

The Unfinished Garden

Like the plough mud that ribbons through salt marshes the Carolinas tend to seep into your pours, invade your nostrils and stick to your shoes.  Visiting lush gardens, walking shell-lined beaches, feasting on crab cakes, riding ferries and tasting salt air is wonderful, but  I have a deep need and desire to know this place on a deeper level.  To do so I am compelled to read  Carolina authors who have lived these rhythms and know them best.

If you are ever lucky enough to visit Wilmington, North Carolina you simply must experience Two Sisters Bookery.  Located at the Cotton Exchange, close to the Cape Fear's Riverwalk, a tinkling bell gently announces your arrival as you step into a world of magic.  Books.  Real books.  Ink and paper books.  Books that give off the aroma of knowledge and wonder.  Books that make me weep, they are so beautiful.  Carroll and I traveled in Daris the Yaris through rainy roadways to experience Two Sisters Bookery during her stay back in February.  There, we stretched our time and imagination in this place of old wood and bright colors.  Eventually, we ended up at  the register - Carroll's arms filled with gifts for her niece while my own were achingly empty.  Though on the hunt for a good book, nothing had yet seemed right ... until we arrived at the counter.  There, to the left of the register was a shelf laden with new books and books by local authors, many bestickered with "Autographed Copy" in hopes of grabbing attention.

There it was - my first book.  It was not beachy as I'd been craving but was instead gardeny.  The title and cover begged my attention.  "The Unfinished Garden," by Barbara Claypole White - an Englishwoman now living in North Carolina.  England?  North Carolina?  Gardening?  Perfect.  After skimming the back cover I snatched it off the shelf and offered the owner payment.  I'm not a polished book reviewer at all but simply must tell you about this book and how it made me feel.  Bear with me.

 The Unfinished Garden

 Barbara Claypole White

"The Unfinished Garden" is about two fractured people - Tilly and James, and takes place amid gardens in both North Carolina and England.  Supported by a fascinating cast of fringe characters we learn Tilly is broken by loss and James is broken by OCD.  While Tilly is a fascinating character in and of herself I was completely riveted - spellbound - by James.  OCD, or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, has affected the lives of several of my friends.  While I've been understanding and nod my head at all the proper times  there is no way in hell I can ever truly "get" what it's like to have OCD.  Barbara Claypole White paints a vivid picture of what James goes through on a daily basis as he struggles with his wayward brain.  Page after page revealed what my friends surely must go through daily and for the rest of their lives.   The mental image of how James' brain makes him walk through a field dotted with dandelions is one that will stay with you forever, along with his explanation to Tilly's son Isaac as she overhears.  

Mind, I also developed a huge crush on James so that may play some part in my love of this book.  How I can have a crush on a book's character attests to the skill of Ms. Claypole White's writing.  The dance Tilly and James play as their relationship grows is reminiscent of another favorite of mine long ago, "The Shell Seekers."  I couldn't put this book down, and even dreamed about it.  It's a story that changes the colors, the sounds, the smells of your world for a while.  Those of you with a deep abiding love to read must curl up with this book on a rainy afternoon, a favored quilt over your lap.  Rich storytelling, lavish scenery and a storyline that grabs from the beginning, The Unfinished Garden shares the story of two broken people who find each other and come together despite the odds.  A simple plot, an old plot, but a great plot done extremely well.

Finishing a good book makes my teeth hurt.  It's simply over.  Just like that.  It's plain painful.  For weeks James and Tilly just wouldn't leave me alone.  They were always nearby like my shadow in late afternoon.  So I did what any sane person would do - I wrote to Barbara Claypole White.  Yes, I did.  I went to her website and spilled my guts - told her how much I loved her book and  that I wasn't ready for James and Tilly to go away.  I want more.  I want to know what happens to them.  Incredibly, she wrote me back.  After several volleys of e-mails, (I am very grateful she doesn't think me a stalker,) I think she understood just how touched I was by her book.  Ms. Claypole White shared with me that James and Tilly won't leave her alone either and she hopes to write a sequel.  As an aside I discovered that like me, Barbara Claypole White works to a playlist.  Yes!  Other people DO that!  If you are so inclined please visit her website and read REAL reviews by actual writers and discover  "The Unfinished Garden" for yourself.  Check out her playlist, too.

Oh, and she shared with me the song that may be inspiration for the sequel  ... but my lips are sealed...

My stack of books.  Each captivating and worthy of their own post.  

I'm buying books at a fevered pace.  You've been warned...

Happy Anniversary!

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”

The quote above, taken from The Hobbit, has proven to be my truth here at the beach.  We came here to rest our souls after the ladder experience.  This process, this healing time, has had the odd effect of erasing my creative.  It completely disappeared, instead becoming a blank white page. White noise.  A vast nothingness.  These days shooting photographs doesn't come easy but I do it anyway.  It may only be a sunrise, a wave, a pelican but I do it in order to remember the process, to keep my skills as fresh as possible.  Quite simply, oddly, photography is not the passion that it was Before Ladder.  At least for now.

Today, March 8, marks the one year anniversary of our arrival at Kure Beach, North Carolina.

Our first few months here were idyllic.  Spring 2012 was pleasant with abundant sunshine.  Lugging chairs to the beach we would simply sit and stare out over the ocean, watch the birds, watch the fishermen and locals who walked along the sparcely attended shoreline.  Once, we witnessed the process of evaporation - moisture rising off the ocean, cooling the air - and felt its immediate effect.  Sometimes we would talk but more often our companionable silence stretched long and deep.  Sinew by sinew my back, shoulders and neck relaxed, gradually, bringing daily noticeable differences.  Sleep was deep and sound.  Solitary meditative beach walks matched the rhythm of the tides - slow, deliberate, silent.  Collecting beach treasures became my new passion. 

And why?  Why collect bits of nature?  Why do I relish the feel of a barnicle-crusted old shell in my hand?  Why must I collect fossilized teeth, bone and barbs? Why do I feel the need to display them, touch them over and over, inhale their briny scent?

I think it's because I'm collecting pieces of myself.

Treasures that interest me are not the usual shells but those that are worn.  Pieces, even. I was worn upon arriving here, and in pieces. 

Initially, I became passionate about pieces of clam shells.  I didn't know at first what they were, but stripes of deep purple, lavender and mauve undulating through smooth creamy pieces caught my eye. I found one.  Then another, and another, and another. Before long I had quite the collection, and they are now proudly displayed in clear glass vases and bowls.

Clam shells are common along the shoreline but they aren't particularly pretty.  Clunky, brown things like a horse's hoof can be readily found any given day.  However, these clunky brown shells contain a miracle within.  As the surf and currents pound them up over time they break up, the brown parts break off and the inner bits of shell are polished by the ocean and sand into these creamy purply bits of loveliness. 

I like to think that's happening to me, to my soul.  The brown, clunky, tired, weary soul I dragged to this place is gradually breaking up, being polished, exposing a soft loveliness inside.

Having always been active and creative, goals were penned before coming here.  More photography, volunteer with the turtle project, write a book, join a land trust, journal and meditate, learn yoga and Reiki. 

However, what I did instead was simply stop.  Stop.  I stopped and I breathed.  At first, my lungs always felt like I'd been swimming when all I did was walk the beach.  The fresh salt air scrubbed my lungs.  Walking serpentine sands strengthened my back, my legs and I turned tan and my hair lighter. My long-neglected body finally felt firmer, felt better, felt healthier, felt rested.

So it has been a year and I think I'm finished resting. I'm beginning to feel the pull of my creative and wonder what direction it will take me.  It's time to begin filling in that blank white page.

Stop it stop it stop it stop it....

You can't hear the cries of trees over the grating sound of chainsaws, the incessant rumbling and bumbling of bulldozers and bobcats.

Nor can you hear their screams over the din as stout, proud branches are hacked and pulled off, down onto the ground, loaded into trailers to be hauled away and burned.

You don't see the bird nests that are destroyed, the butterflies, caterpillars and chrysalis's that are maimed, anoles and tree frogs killed, complete ecosystems that are decimated, or the people who cry at this loss.

You can't hear the ground shriek as thick roots that anchored a living thing to the earth are yanked out and cast away as nothing.

The earth is crying today as one of hers is gone for good.  I am crying, too.  Marc Cohn in my ear, everything blocked out through my iPod, even that doesn't stop the faint rumble from coming through as the carnage continues.

Makes these seeds ever the more precious. 

Beach Treasures

My personal goals for this beach adventure are simple.  Rest, eat healthy, walk abundantly, explore unceasingly, breathe deeply, reconnect with myself and my spouse.  We have been extraordinarily blessed with visits by friends and family since arriving so in between various Me Times I've enjoyed this place through their eyes as well.

A favorite time remains the early mornings.  Long, early walks with Baylee followed by long solitary walks on the beach picking up treasures.  Amazing finds continue to be these fabulous green rocks that the wild, wild sea throws up onto the beach.  Some were too large to carry back, sadly, but the ones I could manage were hoisted under one arm and slogged back to the house, soaking my t-shirt and making my arms quiver with exertion.  What fun!  Free rocks!  Free BEAUTIFUL rocks!  I'm saving up for a rock garden that I'm designing in my head.

This is the first one that I found, all nestled among the dunes next to our walkway. It's a chaos of blues and greens with what I thought to be rusty places embedded throughout.

Upon closer inspection these appear to be fossilized areas of some sort.  Still, there is rust or something there.  I purchased a rock and minerals book to help me identify these rocks but no such luck.  I need a degree in geology simply to understand what they're trying to get through to me.  I'm as dense as a ... rock.  I have scads of these rocks, various shapes and sizes lining the front hallway just waiting for their place to be created.

Some have barnacles crusted on them.

They are so beautiful.
(Blogger refuses to let me center this...go figure...)

This one is small but spectacular.  The camera just can't do it justice.  Shades of chartreuse with these same rusted fossilized places.

I see a face.  Can you? 

When there are no rocks to be found I pick up bits of beach stuff like these bits of petrified wood, likely from the gazillion shipwrecks that line the eastern coast.  At least that's what the romantic in me likes to believe. 

The big surprise has been discovering WWII 50 caliber machine gun bullets driven into the sand by the waves.  These are very heavy, but if the Wild, Wild Sea can hoist boulders onto the beach a "little" bullet wouldn't be a challenge at all.  These come from Fort Fisher, just south of where we are.  During WWII Army soldiers stationed there would fire practice rounds out into the ocean.  Amazingly, these bullets tumbled around the sea and ended up back where they began.

 And then there are the shark's teeth.  These are all fossils, except for the grey one which I suspect is in the process of fossilization.  ?  The two large black blobs at the top are chunks of fossilized turtle carapaces, and the little white circle is a vertebra from some huge fish, likely a shark.  I was quite proud of my little collection until a neighbor showed me a fossilized shark tooth he found that was, I swear, about 4" long and very thick.  Wow.  These are mostly white shark teeth.  Some are too damaged and some too odd for this amateur to identify.

The power of this ocean always thrills me.  Huge waves, powerful currents, the ebb and flow of vast tides, the migrating birds and sea life, the grandeur of this place - I'm blessed to be here.  Looking forward to seeing what Autumn is like on the beach.  Thank you all for hanging in here with me.  I have missed reading your blogs, missed keeping up with you all, and have missed writing and photographing nature.  However, I think my personal tide is still in the process of changing.  Blessing to you all...

Ocean Karma

Beach living usually involves churning sand and foaming waves, soft sounds of laughter muted by the ocean winds, shells and sunrises, cold beers and hot, good reads under canopies, sweat-cooled skin that smells of coconuts.  Simple acts of swimming and walking, watching and enjoying.  Oftentimes, however, events snap you out of your walking Zen and remind you just how wild this place really is.  Recently, several instances of happenstance did just that to me.

We were walking on the pier with friends seeing what the local fishermen/women were pulling in out of the depths.  Young men were wave boarding on the north side of the beach close to the pier.  Kinda like skate boarding but they pop up the waves, skimming flat boards along the surf out into the ocean and pop, pop, pop up the waves, curling around just like skateboards on concrete curls.  Fascinating.  And not only to me.  As we were watching from high above an 8 foot shark - sand or bull - got within mere feet of these boys before the lifeguards blew whistles and closed the beach.  Right behind the shark cruised a massive southern stingray, easily 4 feet wide.  They circled around for some time before disappearing into the gloom.

 

The most wonderful blessing of ALL came the next day.  A completely mind-blowing split second in time.  A happenstance.  A stroke of luck.  A looking in the right place at the right time thing.  A friend and I were sitting on the beach, reading.  Being quiet.  Just us.  The weather was blustery and partly cloudy.  We couldn't put up the canopy for the winds, which were all wild and willy-nilly.  I was reading the latest from a local author titled "Cape Fear Murders," a piece of fiction by an author wanting to be like Janet Evanovitch.  The ocean was the color of bronze, and I found myself fascinated by the waves which came ashore crossing each other from different directions, creating these swirling eddys of foam and ripples as they washed high ashore.  It was so pretty, mesmerizing, zen, meditative.  The waves were coming in from the southwest, basically, and were huge, massive things.  Swimming was impossible.  Shorebirds were feasting in the foam and pelicans and terns were struggling in the winds.  I found it impossible to read because the sight before me was more interesting.  I've got to set this up for you just right because the sighting was very short.  But important.  Life-changing?  Maybe.  Likely.  Anyway, to the thing.  I was just sitting and staring and suddenly a whale breached the surface.  Seriously.  It jumped up in my direction, like heading toward me.  It was right beyond the point where the waves break - very close.  I made some noise and pointed out toward the ocean.  My friend was like, "What?!  What?!"  I couldn't speak, I was so stunned.  Her eyes followed my pointing finger and a few seconds later we saw it's tail fluke flipping up.  My first thought before seeing the tail fluke was that it was a manta ray because of the coloration and lack of dorsal fin, except that it was huge, massive, thick.  The tail fluke cemented the fact that we saw a friggin' whale off the coast of North Carolina.  My friend had her smart phone and did some research.  We determined that it must have been a right whale, although their migration is usually December-March.  Still, whales don't read so they can traverse that path whenever they damn well please. 

I saw a whale.  A.  Whale.  To this day I am dumbfounded.  So, that's the best news, the best time, an event that I can still "feel," if you know what I mean.  Oh, and immediately after the whale breached the surface I looked around and no one else had seen it.  People were playing in the sand, walking the shore, the lifeguard was bored, sunbathers and book readers and shark-teeth finders - not one had noticed the whale.  How many whales have breached while I had my nose pointed toward the sand looking for fossils?  What a sobering thought.

This morning I just happened to wake early and decided to go take sunrise photos.  The sunrise was pretty, and I did get some photos.  However, walking south to check on the two turtle nests just down the beach I spied these little tracks.  Lots of these little tracks.  They look just like the baby turtle track images on my Pleasure Island Sea Turtle Project t-shirt.  I flagged down the sea turtle patrol to ask, but he said they weren't baby turtle tracks.  I'm not sure what they are.  Any idea? That's my footprint lower left for scale.  Beach tracks fascinate me.  Foxes, cats, crabs, birds and now these.  How fun is this? 

Enjoy the happenstances in your life.