Notes from a Quiet Place

Atlantic sunset—photo by William E. Evans, © 2022

To the deer couple–not to be confused with the dear couple otherwise known to us as the lovely couple who we’ve known for many years–no, I’m talking about the deer couple nosing (nuzzling, noodling, maybe nozzle-ing,) each other while cropping the dry winter grass just below the stair landing. To these two the following is dedicated:

We ‘uns in our rental beach house of dreams wish you a Happy Holiday Season–and wish ya’ll would take that grass nibbling further off so Layla can get on with her midnight pee instead of lunging off down the stairs and breaking my promise not to yell at her. You do not want to find out what she’d do with the two of you.

One bright morning back home, Layla went from zero to sixty across the lawn, disappearing behind the bushes. So I hustled after. She’d met up with one beefy sized fellow—down behind the bushes hugging the intermittent stream—the two of them were having a Mexican standoff by the time I arrived. A distance of five feet at most from nose to nose. The full grown deer was eying her, then me, while Layla tried working out which end of the buck she was gonna try for. Had she ever teamed up with Maddie, our previous husky huntress, they’d have come on him from both directions like their ancestors would have..

Some critters just won’t stop being who they are. If dreams of meat on the hoof are in the genes, what would you expect? Being it was our first night in town and being guests on their island, however, we retreated indoors and waited for them to take their grazing elsewhere—much to Layla’s disappointment.

Here in Sanderling, late December, only one or two other houses have lights, and the night sky is about as clear as you could want. There’s a telescope in the house I may need to check out, though I hear a storm is heading east and the clouds will be thickening by morning. Two weeks of downtime. The first week of a vacation is to shake off the work blues—by the second week you believe you could live here forever.

It’s probably my imagination, but for all the years I’ve spent on the Outer Banks, weather patterns here happen too fast to mark—unless it’s one of those big ones, in which case it can’t be over soon enough. Being hard by this mass of ocean does something to the weather, much like it does something to my head. I feel like an old man by the sea. Oh, right.

Storm of the Century

They guaranteed the storm would arrive promptly at noon a week ago Thursday. They virtually guaranteed the temperature would drop dramatically as the front came roaring in from across the plains—like the song from Oklahoma—but the thermometer barely budged. Why the lag in the cold air? There was certainly enough wind to bring it along.

One out of two is damn good for a weather forecast, don’t you think?

First arriving was the solid gray bank of heavy clouds pushed east by winds that weren’t to be denied, mainly because the vertical elevations on the Outer Banks barely vary, with miles of open water across Currituck Sound—while being pinned against that other large body called the Atlantic. So wind is king on these barrier islands, and it was slamming rain sideways all afternoon into the evening. Gazing out at the ocean, the horizon line was missing. Just gray and more gray filled the windows, with rain tattooing the glass.

They call this place the Graveyard of the Atlantic for all the ships it’s swallowed—from the earliest Spanish conquistadors to German U-boats and their prey. Unlike the West Coast, the water is shallow and the shoals keep shifting with the storms.

The forecast said gusts up to 30-miles-per-hour were to be expected on the Outer Banks. Ha. The wind never dropped as low as that. More like a steady 40-50 with gusts into the tropical storm range, and our vacation house, sitting proud ten feet or so above the water’s edge, caught every bit of it, shaking like it was going to fly away.

Our old house in Carolina Dunes had been through some big storms, Hurricane Isabel included, yet when we went to sell it, the home inspector pontificated about the roof trusses not being strong enough for his client from Idaho. Pray, and do they get many hurricanes in Idaho? “Take it or leave it,” was my response. They may get more snow, but they don’t know from hurricanes in Idaho. The house wasn’t terribly good looking, but it had served us well—through every hurricane and nor’easter for the thirteen years we lived in it.

Last Thursday’s storm was a concern, the way you could feel the entire frame being wracked like the devil. Those tie-downs and bolted connections held, but for my money, I’d like it tighter than this rental.

“Well, of course, Evans, you’re sitting hard by the ocean.” Except this storm wasn’t coming off the ocean. Quite the opposite, and it felt as though any minute we’d be joining the Atlantic. Our house in Carolina Dunes sits high—some fifty feet above sea level—and it never shook this badly.

I kept thinking about the round pilings here. First place I’ve seen with other than square. So the essential first floor beams must meet atop the round piles instead of being let in alongside them. Whether that’s the issue with the house frame, I can’t say, but it makes you wonder.

The rain wasn’t so bad, but the waves flooding the road through Duck caught folks by surprise. Plenty of flooding from the winds alone, and the wind continued for the next several days, so the road stayed under water. The Duck police didn’t write too many speeding tickets, but they did plant squad cars north and south of the worst of it.

Today the surf remains wicked strong, with rollers starting way offshore and beach debris strewn one end to the other. It’s barely 50 degrees, and the house is still being twisted by the wind. The wave action is downright tubular, dude!

Though 50% is no better than even odds, right?

Back to the Future

D had done gone and bought herself an all-battery-powered vehicle which we hope will save a chunk of the globe long enough so people would be around to remember us. OK, she doesn’t fully explain her motives, but they run along these lines, and as far as I know, she’s never been into science fiction.

Forty years ago, Jimmy Carter lectured the country on how we needed to get off Saudi oil—so the country reciprocated by voting instead for What Me Worry Reagan and the environmentalist of the century, Anne Gorsuch. I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but we in the U.S. will do anything to maintain our lazy ass ways of life. Boomers have been particularly skilled at that—60s peace and love didn’t mean we wanted to do without.

On the way down to the Outer Banks, we stopped in Newport News for a recharge in the Walmart parking lot and got to see how the other half lives—like the lady in blue patterned tights and fake leather booties. She pulled up in her Ford 250 with oversized tires, muddy fenders and the requisite coon dog cage filling the cargo bay. D was plumb amazed. I said the truck could have belonged to the lady’s live-in boyfriend who’d send her for a six pack, but she looked tough enough her own self. Came back to the truck with a couple plastic bags and roared off again.

It's not the people, it’s the vacant downtowns Walmart has supplanted that marks a decline. But we’ll keep buying cheap shit from elsewhere until the end. Watching Walmart shoppers trudge from car to big box and back made me wonder: will middle America embrace electric cars—or even be able to afford them? This could well become another divide, as if we needed one. Working class America hates being lectured at—they hated it from their elementary school teachers and hate it worse when pointy-headed intellectuals from Ivy League schools harp about saving the planet when decent laboring jobs are so scarce. But even middle Americans can see what’s happening, can’t they?

Forty minutes of people-watching later, we were back to cruising east on I-64 on our way to the Outer Banks. It a nice enough vehicle, with all the bells and whistles 12 volt gizmos can offer—with multi-colored LEDs, and a quiet ride like no other. You go from sixty to ninety with hardly a whoosh or a twitch of a big toe. The future has arrived. Perhaps.

It reminds me of scenes of Harrison Ford flying through a dystopian LA in Blade Runner, and Sean Young as the most beautiful replicant I’d ever seen. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was the short story by Philip K. Dick—as dystopic a writer as they come and totally in sync with the 60s. The movie by comparison is sorta uplifting.

Or take Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element, a down and out cabbie from the future. Best early scene: he orders takeout from the Chinese lady in her delivery hover van outside his window five-zillion feet about the ground. And Milla Jovovich to ease the eyes. Sigh. Where was I?

Oh, right, D’s electric car. It offsets my 2004 Volvo. Though if we all switch over to electric cars, where does that leave mass transportation? Recalling the 60s when private vehicles were declared the bane of urban life—and they still are—with the advent of electric vehicles, the future doesn’t bode well for their disappearance. In addition to cheap shit from China, we love our personal chariots. Nobody’s talking about ‘freedom of the road’ these days—not on the East Coast—maybe Idaho. Here’s hoping teleportation will solve the problem.

This late day’s horizon is but poor vision
narrowing the ocean to a line
and when the sun gives way to night
its darker thought remains.

Sunset at Duck——photo by William E. Evans, © 2022