Rodanthe & Lake Accotink

Rodanthe Is Leaving

Richard Gere starred in the 2008 movie, along with Diane Lane, a real three-hanky story. Nights in Rodanthe was probably the only time the village ever made it to Hollywood—at least before it made the front page of the Washington Post, becoming an object lesson on global warming in a piece titled “Retreat in Rodanthe.”

The Post article is accompanied by a color photograph of yet another house temporarily elevated on supports awaiting its new piers, having just been moved back from the encroaching ocean. House moving on the Outer Banks is somewhat of a local tradition, becoming more frequent as the beach erosion and rising ocean continues.

For the longest time, the story was the Outer Banks were moving ever eastward toward the mainland. I could visualize the cartoon but not the truth of it. Whether the current-day erosion is a result of wandering sand dunes or global warming hardly seems important to folks living by the shore facing the inevitable.

A few miles south of Rodanthe, a couple decades ago the Cape Hatteras lighthouse was placed on a ginormous steel platform and hauled on rails to save it from the waves. After a hundred years of warning ships away from Diamond Shoals, the lighthouse itself was on its way to joining the wrecks before the move. Lighthouses are from older times, but they hold a claim on some of us.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse  being moved—photo by Nat. Park Service

Moving the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is the NPS story

The southern-most islands, Hatteras and Ocracoke, are the most threatened, though the erosion runs the length of the Outer Banks. Spend any time in the village of Ocracoke, it obviously lives on borrowed time, which is truly sad. The thought that Ocracoke won’t be there in twenty years is hard to accept.

Anyone considering another beach house on the Outer Banks has to be slightly nuts. Even a house forty-some feet above the surf. Yet, if you consider that Ocracoke the island dates back to before Blackbeard keel-hauled his boat on the back side of the island, and that nothing lasts forever, maybe that’s a good enough run.

What makes the Banks remarkable is how long these islands have sustained a truly island life, how they remained aloof from the great land rush, most of which happened in my lifetime. In the off-season one can pretend—overlooking the empty rentals—this curious prehistoric ridge between ocean and sound will remain forever indifferent to its temporary occupants. In season it feels we are no better at caring for this place than kids in Fort Lauderdale on spring break..

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The Post article caught me off guard. The usual feature articles cleave to the local region, though to their credit, the greater subject of a warming world isn’t ignored. Supposing all the fuss about global warming doesn’t prove out—what’s the worst result, Exon and Shell issue smaller stockholder dividends? And Senator Manchin may need to find a real job?

Speaking of politicians, back in 2012 the North Carolina legislature required the state’s own coastal research arm to recant / revise / cover up any long term projections, seeing as it upset the real estate community. New Law in North Carolina Bans Latest Scientific Predictions of Sea-Level Rise a 2012 ABC News report by Alon Harish tells the tale.

I sympathize with anyone making a living from developing the Outer Banks, but sticking your head in the sand (heh heh) won’t fix things.

“Rodanthe’s struggles encapsulate thorny questions and unresolved issues around policies that can incentivize [sic] risky coastal development, the unevenness of real estate disclosures, questions about personal risk, the difficulties of protecting oceanfront properties and the obstacles to moving people out of harm’s way when necessary.” from Sounding the retreat collapse and relocation of homes in Outer Banks offer a dire warning, by Brady Dennis in The Washington Post

Of course, in order to move a house, one either needs a large enough lot, or to buy another lot nearby. After Hurricane Irene tore through in 2011, D and I drove the beach road in Kitty Hawk past houses sitting offshore in the surf that had been on dry land on our last trip—and nobody mentioned where the septic tanks went to. The cottages been precariously perched directly next to Route 12 since Noah, so there was no land left to move them to. These days that stretch of road runs hard alongside the ocean, and I wonder how many remember.

Here’s a video: Hurricane Irene, 2011, Before, During & After by Tony Britton, Island Shore Productions.

But returning to the Post article, the story’s focus was on individual families, ordinary folks buying beachfront too late in the game. Back a few years when we owned a beach house high on a ridge overlooking the ocean, the village of Duck (and its taxpayers) put down millions to replenish the beach. Only a few years after, the beach had been scoured back close to where it had been.

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The house made famous by the movie itself was famously moved back away from the ocean a few years after the filming. It’s operated as a bed and breakfast now, drawing the curious with its history. The movie probably did more for the fame of the house than its leading actors’ careers. Rotten Tomatoes didn’t think much of the flick.

For the many day trips we’ve taken to Ocracoke, dogs hanging out the windows, we’ve driven Route 12 through that whole slew of villages, Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon and Buxton. We know people who will only vacation there, but we’ve always headed for Ocracoke. End of the world. Any further south, there’s the ferry to Cedar Island and not too much outside of swimming. Just maybe on our next trip, we’ll stop in Rodanthe with Layla riding shotgun, so we can claim we knew it well.

Molly, Mojo & D on the Ocrocoke dock waiting on the Cedar Island ferry—photo by William E. Evans, © 2010

Lake Accotink

Not long after we’d moved to Northern Virginia, my high school buddy, Bryon, phoned—or maybe he’d written since people still did that in the 70s–to tell me Georgine was married to someone named Eric living somewhere in Fairfax—where the hell that was—and was that close to where we were? Carlyn, baby Sean and I were renting an upscale apartment in Reston with actual trees for a view, and a walking trail, so yes, we were close enough to get together. I’d lost track of Georgine. She and Byron were a serious item in high school.

George (Georgine)–had figured in both our high school years. She had introduced me to Emily of the short story, Elena’s Letters—I’d changed the names in the story in case Emily ran across the piece, but what the heck, she should be proud of her role in it; I was glad to have known her, even if by only letter.

The point of all this is, on meeting Eric, when I mentioned that I ran, he smiled and told me about the route circuiting Lake Accotink. Unlike my short three mile runs in Miami, Eric ran distance, taking his border collie, Heather, on regular fifteen milers. You may recall a piece of mine about a border collie, A Good Dog – the Conscious of a Dog.

Lake Accotink is a small lake—55 acres per Wikipedia’s article on Lake Accotink—hardly more than a pond. Even so, it’s been woven deep in my life going back to the early 80s. Carlyn and I bought a condo in Annandale–a converted garden-style apartment building built in the 60s, so I was just a pedestrian bridge across the Beltway from that trail running through the woods, one that I would spend so much time passing through.

It’s a six mile loop, starting in the far corner parking lot at the Wakefield Rec Center, following Accotink Creek under Braddock Road through wetlands to the lake, up around the hills, emerging by the boat rental shack and the lake itself, paralleling the berm, then climbing past the dam at the south side and onto the old railroad track converted to a trail.

Best time to run Accotink is in the fall when the leaves are turning and the air is getting crisp after a long summer.

I have measured seasons and years running that trail—and more recently biking it. Sweltering summers grateful for the forest foliage, stirred by the smell of fall, amazed by a thick blanket of snow across the hills, always respectful of the spring torrents when the creek became a raging river, ever reminded of running through s forest, playing Indians in my childhood. Some folks leave childhood hardly looking back—I was fortunate to reach out and touch the trees, same as I had as a kid.

Through friendships forged by weekend runs, finding love and losing it again, being led by the dogs I have lived with, learning by their enthusiasm to cherish being alive.

In the 80s looping the lake, passing the modest houses backed up to the water, I’d wonder what it would feel to live surrounded by a forest by a lake. I can clearly remember the first time I showed D that trail. If I’d known D that far back, we’d have found a lakeside home—not that I regret where we live, only admitting the magnetism of such jeweled places. We survive by water—more than survive, we live.

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Now, Fairfax County’s Public Works officials say they want to let Lake Accotink just silt in, mainly because they don’t want to be bothered with maintaining it. Those are the facts. Yes, it’s a man-made lake. Even if it wasn’t, maintenance is required in any densely populated area. Maybe they’re just now coming to realize that.

Officials ready to let urban runoff swallow a cherished Virginia lake by Antonio Olivo in The Washington Post.

“But, like the rest of the Washington region, the community is facing the result of decades of development that often did not have adequate storm-water controls or preserve enough open space to serve as buffers against storm runoff, county officials say.” from Officials ready to let urban runoff swallow a cherished Virginia lake by Antonio Olivo in The Washington Post.

Oh, right, the old ‘everybody was doing it!’ argument. Look over there, look, look. For god’s sake don’t look at us. Jeez, we didn’t know. Besides, we weren’t even born back then and now we have to maintain it?

Didn’t they just build a merry-go-round looking out on the lake? Replenished the beach? So they will leave the merry-go-round by a wetlands? What a photo opportunity for the Hispanics working 3 jobs a day to show their children. What a great country.

The fuller story is that our Fairfax County forefathers believed for too long they lived in rural country. Perhaps in Lord Fairfax’s day.

The poohbahs of free enterprise encouraged development at a breakneck pace, hardly considering the consequences when there was money to be had, and cheap land to play with. An entire generation of Virginians (post-war Boomers) sincerely believed in a Constitutional right to run amuck—the muck mainly heading downstream.

About stream hydrology: when you don’t let streams wander, the big storms scour the embankments in chunks, added to which is the contaminated runoff from too much lawn fertilizer and blacktop. The whole mess gets run fast through the voters’ neighborhoods and unceremoniously dumped into the Potomac heading for the Chesapeake Bay. Not that this was a mysterious process, only nobody took it seriously.

Jack Herrity, then County Board Chair, was a vocal proponent of development—he never met an office building he didn’t love, along with the acres of asphalt accommodating the vehicles. In the 60s and 70s, supporters of public transportation were communists if not the devil incarnate. Shirley Highway (I-395) was named for a road contractor. Like living in Dallas with more tree cover.

Herrity Building @ the source of Difficult Run—photo by Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0

Now isn’t that an artistic urban environment?

Nothing I can prove, but is southern intransigence to regulations possibly a vestige of the Civil War? If you tell a southerner it’s a bad practice, they’ll tell you to go to hell without setting down the bourbon. Or it’s just another aspect of American life in general. Dunno.

Flood control, the fastest ways to rid areas of runoff, was the name of the game, and all the rage in civil engineering schools. The best program Fairfax County engineers could come up with was to haul 1-ton boulders to drop along the banks, as in Sign on a Trail, one of the first blogs I wrote.

By the Beltway—photo by William E. Evans, © 2019

During this same time, a good stretch of Holmes Run was channelized in concrete like the famous Los Angeles River, the effect being more debris flowing into Lake Barcroft, and it’s still coming.

Natural streams (not yet channelized) meander. Hitting a rock, the surrounding soil is regularly scoured. Sections where streams bend create small beaches at the eddies while gnawing the opposite side. When storms send large volumes downstream along with flotsam and jetsam, trees, tires and old dishwasher parts come along for the ride. The math is simple: more people less land more trash.

Perhaps in the 80s no one appreciated the longer term consequences, beginning with eroding stream banks and ending by the Chesapeake Bay’s choking on the nitrogen. Did you know there were warning about swimming in the Potomac? The entire state of Virginia practiced it—the Rappahannock was closed for kepone pollution. Hell, the entire country did. We haven’t been the most thoughtful of cultures when it comes to the environment. And we like to name our worst offenses in memory of the Native Americans.

Fairfax is home to the planners who don’t believe in pedestrians sufficiently to develop a continuous sidewalk system, and claim that Tysons Corner is an urban center. Do you see any contradictions here?

In the heart of the county, where Route 7 crosses Columbia Pike, there’s a highway interchange worthy of an interstate whose bridge has no sidewalks. Of course only the immigrants walking to work ever cross, so why bother, eh? If you missed the blog on Tysons Corner, that urban sink hole of a traffic jam. I was conveying just how wrong-headed the Fairfax County’s planning continues to be. Age of the Automobile was written in 2020.

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But yes, let’s be practical about siltation ruining a perfectly pretty waterway. We’re a poor community with a poverty stricken tax base and if our management types tell us to let the Lake Accotink go, we must agree.

Not like the folks in Lake Barcroft would pay for annual dredging on account of the silt pouring down Holmes Run—oh wait, that’s right; we do pay for regular dredging.

The fact that Fairfax County puts off basic maintenance for decades, is a poor excuse, ignoring a modest-sized piece of nature remaining in that part of the county. And the Fairfax County tax revenues are so paltry, we couldn’t possibly afford to pay for Lake Accotink as active parkland, given that it is in fact a park.

Now if it were a national treasure, say, like the small pond at Katsura surrounded by gardens and tea houses, we’d feel differently. Though I’ll bet Herrity would have found a way to back-fill the pond and drop some office buildings on that site.

The Old Shoin at Katsura—photo by William E Evans, © 2016