VISIT NORTH CAROLINA FOR THE SIMPLE PLEASURES, PART I

It's lovely that this month's readers are from Canada, Germany, Indonesia, India, Japan, Portugal, Russia, Singapore and the US.  Places I have visited or plan to or dream about. So whether North Carolina is home or far, far away I'm encouraging visitors. If that's impossible I hope these photos make you feel like you've visited.  They're some of my favorite places.  And armchair travel is a pleasure on its own. Lot's of us see the world that way. 

North Carolina stretches from the Atlantic coast to the mountains, so let's start at the beach! There are rental houses, camp sites, and everything in-between.  We can't do it all justice, but here are some gems.  

The pelicans are prolific.  I wish I were a good enough photographer to catch them diving beak first, but no such luck. The gulls heckle and swoop and grab french fries in mid-air.  This one sat still on a piling on the Morehead City waterfront.

Day and 1/2 Day Fishing Charters

Morehead City is an active Port with large container ships waiting their turn at the loading docks.  Its population is about 9,000.  It hosts fishing tournaments and provides causeway access to the string of island towns across Bogue Sound.  Below is the fisherman's path at Fort Macon, where there's an old civil war fort and Bogue Sound meets the Atlantic. Surf casting from the rock jetty is good here, though a bit treacherous. You have to be nimble.  

The boating is good too.  And the pier fishing. For surf fishing, swimming and shelling, nestled public paths meander through the live oak out to the beach in residential areas.  It's all free.  Parking is a short walk away.

Oceana Fishing Pier

Public Beach Access, Dogwood Circle

These last two photos are of the same path, back to front, beach to road.  We take this path often with a beach wagon for our gear. 
 

There are so many great places for seafood on the Chrystal Coast. Redfish Grill is a waterfront bar and grill in downtown Morehead, open year-round. 

Red Fish Grill, Morehead City Waterfront

Southern Salt Seafood Company opened where the old Captain Bill's used to be.  Built on piers over Bogue Sound.

Southern Salt Seafood, Morehead City Waterfront

And Crab's Claw, at the Circle on Atlantic Beach with breezy upper and lower outside-seating right on the sand.  The owner, Toni, does an amazing Thanksgiving Day feast.  Roast oysters, turkey and ham, oyster stuffing. . . . Everyone who comes gets a $10-off coupon for another visit.  Can't wait to see the re-build after last fall's hurricanes. 

Crab's Claw, Atlantic Beach Boardwalk

These yard signs are all about.  We don't want drilling off the North Carolina shore.  This yard is on the Sound side of Pine Knoll Shores, one of the island towns built around the canals and a great place to bike-ride. You can also bike-ride along the ocean at low tide when the sand is hard.  Just save the wind-at-your-back for the return ride!   

Colorful canoe racks are in every local waterside marina and park.  This one is in Beaufort, just 8 miles from Morehead City over another causeway.  Beaufort is a pre-revolutionary war town established in 1709.  Wild horses roam across Taylor's creek and on Shackleford Banks, accessible by ferry from the town. Great for a day with your picnic cooler. Or you can unwind at the Front Street Grill at Stillwater on Taylor's creek in Beaufort and watch the horses across the water. 

Historic white houses line the streets in Beaufort.  This small commercial alley looks lovingly tended.  A bottle tree decorates another front garden.  The town is a walkable paradise except for the hottest summer days. 

The lighthouse on Shackleford Banks is also accessible by ferry.  A wonderful place to hike and swim.  The shelling is magnificent on the Crystal Coast, especially at low tide, after a storm, and in winter.  I have glass containers of olives and augurs (a carnivore smaller than your little fingernail), welks and Lady Slippers, jingles and coral, calico scallops and razor shell clams. . . .  It's hard to overstate how exhilarating a ride to the lighthouse is, watching it come into view and grow larger on the horizon, skirting smaller islands as you go. Then walking the width down a path through low dunes to the Atlantic Ocean and if it's calm enough, floating away an hour or so.          

Sunsets are not to be outdone.  Sunrises either.  And best of all the beaches are never crowded.  At least not unless it's Fourth of July!

Maybe the wonderful beaches in Portugal aren't either--one of my wish-list places.  They aren't crowded in the UK where I've been, where the locals "wild swim" in a cold sea.  But they were on the Mediterranean!  

Sunset in January, Emerald Isle

So, yes, come to North Carolina and start at the beaches.  There are more.  Hatteras, Kitty Hawk, Nags Head, Ocracoke Island, Cedar Island, Oriental, then south, Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, Long Beach. I'm sure I've skipped someone's favorite. 

In Part II I'll try to persuade to you visit or armchair-visit the Piedmont, the middle of the state where my North Carolina family lives.  Foothills all the way to the mountains.  Stay tuned!

 

WHEN DO YOU FEEL BEST ABOUT YOURSELF?

My New Jersey family sent me a book of writing prompts for Christmas, 52 Lists for Togetherness (Sasquatch Books, Seattle).  I was surprised that they knew me so well.  It's hard to pick the right book for someone else. Many of the writing prompts are about connections, ways to love, respect, admire and appreciate those around us. I don't resonate to all the lists, but to many I do.  Here are a few you may want to have a go at:

• List the Friends, Family, Coworkers, Mentors and Others who come to mind when you hear the word Community.
• List everything you feel grateful for at this present point in your life.
• List the ways your life is different now from how it was one year ago.
• List the mantras or guiding words you want to live by.
• List the things that you prefer to do alone.
• List the lessons you have learned from people older than you.
• List the ways you would describe yourself to someone who wants to get to know you at your core.  What unique qualities make up your being?
• List the places where your most significant relationships grew. 
• List the things that make you feel loved and supported by others.
• List the ways you like to love and support others.
• Chose someone close to you and list the times you have seen them at their happiest. 

Each list item then has an Action bullet, like "choose a relationship to focus on," or "share the words that guide you with someone who is struggling," or "decide how best to raise the happiness quotient of someone close to you the next time they're blue" and so on. It's a nice project to begin the day or end it.  

One of the Lists sparked a conversation with another couple.  The prompt is, "List when you feel best about yourself."  I said "When I feel loved."  The two men in the conversation both picked occasions of professional success, recognition or competence.  The other woman picked something related to her pride in her family.  She and I are also professionals but neither of us said we feel best when we do our jobs particularly well.  

Someone said the question felt manipulative.  But there's no right or wrong answer.  Everyone is different. We receive society's conditioning differently and are raised differently.  Our answers may vary from year to year as our life experiences grow.  A sampling of 4 yields no conclusions. But I am interested in thinking about the answers.  Strangely, I found a poem that fits my own choice, just ran across it when reading another book.  The poem is by Raymond Carver (1938-1988) who died of lung cancer.  Called Late Fragment, the poem reads,

And did you get what

you wanted from this life even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Carver wrote the poem while he was dying, the final poem in his last published work.  It is inscribed on his tombstone.  I am new to Carver's work, but I have learned that brevity is a hallmark of his.  Did you get what you wanted from this life even though you're dying? he's asked.  "I did" he says with confidence. He is a man beloved.  I like his contentment and assurance.  Feeling himself beloved on earth brings peace.  No wonder this short poem was chosen for his grave. 

It's good to know ourselves, isn't it?  And to find others, even a long dead American poet, who feel the same.  Are you in the mood to try one of the prompts?  Or create your own?  They don't take long.  Nina Naomi