Tag: hiking

My Ten Days of Christmas: Day 8

Posted on Posted in Christmas, Grief, Growth, Self-care, travelTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Chicamacomico

I can tell my vacation is nearing its end the same way I can tell its time to do laundry: all my favorite pairs of underwear are used up. All that remain are the ill-fitting and/or raggedy pairs.

I have two more days left in Chicamacomico.

Chicamacomico is an Algonquin word that roughly translates into “shifting or sinking sands.” It is the original name for three communities that have come to be known as Rodanthe, Waves, and Salvo.

As an aside, I learned today that the “e” is pronounced in Rodanthe.

During my first trip out to the beach this morning with coffee in hand, I noticed the people who had been staying in the Ebb Tide house were leaving. Now’s my chance, I thought. I’ll go ask if I can take a quick peak inside. I approached a man with this request and he clearly did not wish to accommodate me. I explained that I thought it was super cute and he said, “It’s not cute on the inside.”

A good while after they left, I decided to see what I could see from the windows. I approached the steps leading up to the deck and saw quite plainly that the sands on this beach are indeed shifting.

I climbed the steps and took the following photos of the interior by looking through the windows.

In my opinion, cute is in the eyes of the beholder.

I had been waiting for today because today, the Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station Museum would allegedly be open. I had discovered this lifesaving station by chance, was intrigued by its structures, and wanted to learn more about it. When I arrived, a large “CLOSED” sign was posted on the gate. A car was in the parking lot and lights were on in one of the buildings. I decided to call a number listed online. Maybe they were just closed for lunch? A woman answered and told me they were indeed closed but she could let me come into the gift shop.

Inside the gift shop were prints depicting the bravery of the keepers of the lifesaving station and their crew and the treacherous conditions with which they were often met. Among them was an uncanny print of a team of men using ropes to drag a boat across the sand in the middle of a raging storm. “You couldn’t get horses to pull the boat in a storm, so the men had to,” my hostess explained to me. She loved this lifesaving station and all its history. She delighted in answering my questions and would have told me more than I could retain probably. But I made some purchases and left. I do want to return at a time when the museum is open. The tours are self-guided and offer a unique glimpse back in time.

Postcard of lifesaving crew on their way to rescue the crew of a wreck with a surfboat c1900
Postcard of U.S. Lifesaving Station c1900 Early Morning Training Exercise.
Postcard of lifesaving crew in front of their surfboat. Surfmen had numbers on their uniforms to denote their rank.
Postcard of Lightship #71 Diamond Shoal Station, NC 1913.

I decided to wander north to see if I could find an open restaurant. I could not. But I happened upon a curious marker that made me pull over.

I parked my car and got out, determined that this was a public area to explore, and set off walking along a winding, sandy road.

I spotted a deer off to my left who was standing partially hidden by a shrub and looking at me. I stopped and made an “ooooo!” sound. A curious baby deer peered out from the other side of the shrub! I stood looking at the two of them, the two of them stood looking at me, until the mom leapt off, and the baby followed suit. They ran to the top of a sand dune and paused to look back at me before disappearing to the other side.


I walked on, approaching a crest in a hill and I wondered what I’d find once I reached the top.

I found more road.

I followed the road all the way to its end. And there was nothing but sand and sea.

The vast expanse of emptiness, the absence of any sort of buildings was startling. I held my arms out to embrace the emptiness. It was a very large emptiness so I had to spread my arms out wide.

I returned to my car and drove back to the house where I’m staying. I was lured away from my room by the cute Jack Russell puppy named Ozzie who is staying at a house just down the road from me. Ozzie is a mess. Quite full of himself. I managed to get a few pics of him trying to make friends with a cat, who would have nothing to do with him.

Jack Russells are fearless animals. I appreciate this about them. Because I’ve been crippled by fear over the years. Fear of what other people think of me, basically.

This fear kept me hanging on to the idea that one day, my friend from Oregon – the one who was going to move to NC to be with me, the one who quite suddenly reversed his affection and direction mid-trip, abandoning all his spoken plans, the one who called me the “Hope Diamond of manipulative geniuses,” the one who is the source of my grieving – one day, maybe five or ten years from now, we might become friends again. I could not stand the idea that he thinks I am the “Hope Diamond of manipulative geniuses.” I wanted him to see that he was wrong, that I’m a good person. I held onto a remnant of that hope until today. I think that’s why I’d been hanging on to correspondences. But not anymore.

I deleted over a year’s worth of text messages between me and this guy. Every single day for over a year. Text messages that went back and forth sometimes for hours at a time. I could have written a novel or a play in the time I spent writing text messages. In one quick motion, I deleted them all. I deleted his phone number. I deleted emails and his email address. I blocked him on social media. And in this manner, I have symbolically shut the door forever on the possibility of being that guy’s friend. That possibility does not exist. Because I have learned some valuable lessons at Chicamacomico.

The people I want in my life are people who are capable of weathering storms with me. People who have moral attributes like courage, tenacity, loyalty, and people who manage to keep wonder alive. The people I want in my life are people who won’t lose their footing when the sands shift and who will enjoy riding the waves that shift them.

I want to be the sort of person that I would accept as a friend.

These are the realizations that resulted from my stay in Chicamacomico. And for that, Chicamacomico will always be a part of my heart.

My Ten Days of Christmas: Day 2

Posted on Posted in Christmas, Self-care, travelTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Everything is Temporary

I had a mercifully good sleep last night. My alarm was set for 6:30 this morning. My plan was to get an early start, head into Kill Devil Hills where a mechanic would look at my car, tell me why the battery light was on and hopefully rectify the situation. However, when the alarm went off, I did not care about getting up to see a mechanic. Instead, I cared about fortifying myself with extra rest. And so, I followed that impulse and slept an extra hour.

Upon waking, I felt timid about doing all the things I ordinarily do first thing in the morning. Pee. Make coffee. Drink some water. Get dressed. I felt awkward in this room that felt not at all like my room. But I breathed through the discomfort and slowly and methodically did the things I ordinarily do first thing in the morning.

I think the moment that I splashed water on my face was when I experienced my first taste of gratitude since arriving here in Rodanthe. What a gift it is to cup one’s hands under a running faucet, catch some water and bring it up to one’s face. What a gift to have an indoor bathroom with running water! The gratitude was immense. So much so that I wondered what had happened to the anxious being of the previous night.

What is there to be anxious about? I find things. 2021 was the most anxiety-filled year I’ve experienced in a very long time and over the past several weeks, my anxiety went through the roof. It’s probably going to take a good long while to untangle all the causes and resulting manifestations, so I am going to have to learn to be patient during this time. Untying knots is a painstakingly tedious process that cannot be rushed.

I took a cup of coffee with me outside and walked to the ocean. It isn’t far. Just up the road — which ends abruptly in a sand dune. I think it probably was not always this way. I think at some point the road had a proper end. Possibly there were stairs leading over the sand to the beach. I get the sense that the sand has gradually encroached upon the road, covering the stairs in my imagination, so that to get to the ocean, one simply climbs the sand dune. Once atop the dune, the ocean is right at one’s feet.

A small house to my right had a “For Sale” sign on it. It’s name was “Ebb Tide” which I found ironic. Because the tide had clearly flowed much more than ebbed, repeatedly encroaching upon the hopeful little house. It appeared that sand had piled up around it and under it, making it much closer to the ground than it had been designed to be.

As I climbed down over the sand dune, I observed how close the tide was to the little house. I felt sorry for it and its owner. They know it will one day be under water. They are just hoping to turn a profit before they experience that great loss.

I was a little startled by how little beach there was. The water rolled up to my feet several times. There was space to walk along the water to my right / south. But there would be no walking to my left / north. The water came all the way up to the houses.

I headed south and paused when a feather captured my attention. It was small with markings similar to a blue jay’s feather without the rich blue hue. I bent over to pick it up and the wind blew it away from me. I then remembered a Native American tradition of asking the entity, whether a rock or shell or feather, permission to take it home with you. But you have to listen because sometimes the entity does not want to go home with you. This feather did not want to go home with me.

I happened upon another feather. It was extraordinarily long with a very strong rachis. I asked if it wanted to come home with me and it too said no. I asked if I could pick it up and it reluctantly said yes. So I picked it up gingerly at the calamus and measured its heft. It was an impressive feather from a large bird of some sort. I laid it back on its spot in the wet sand and took a photo of it. As I did, I remembered that today was Sarah Browder’s birthday. A beautiful feather of a girl who was blown off this planet by a man with a gun. I remembered this because taking the photo of the feather reminded me of the time I took a photo of a dead butterfly in the sand during a previous beach trip. I’d placed the butterfly’s body in a sand memorial I built on the anniversary of her death.

Thus was the onset of crying spell #1 today.

My coffee cup was now empty and I decided to go back to the house to refill it. Outside the house where I am staying, I met the person who owns the house and another person who lives in the house. They were jump-starting a truck. Which reminded me to test my car and see if it would start. It did.

I went inside to call the mechanic as it was now much later than I had intended for it to be. The result of that conversation was the decision to wait until tomorrow to drive into Kill Devil Hills. I followed my body’s cues to take it easy today.

I had more coffee and created a little altar for the Solstice. In my own silly hierarchy of trip preparations, I had the foresight to include items for such an altar. I forgot all my toiletries. But I had altar pieces. I burned candles and palo santo and indeed brightened the corner where I temporarily live.

I participated in a four hour ceremony via Zoom designed to set one’s intentions for the coming year. I was in a very tender heart space during this ceremony and found many opportunities for tears to be shed. I struggled with the hurt in my heart. It was so overwhelming at times. I observed the happiness in the other people on Zoom and asked myself, “where, where is the happiness in me?” I breathed through the difficult moments, found sparks of inspiration and hope, and felt a great deal better at the end of the four hours than I had at the beginning. However, after the ceremony ended and I was alone in the room that was not my own, I felt that familiar anxiety rising. And here’s the thing: just like the tide, harsh feelings rise and then they recede. That is the way of it. If you can just hold on, you’ll be able to experience peace after a storm.

Many times today, I thought of a Thich Nhat Hanh teaching. With young children, he explains that strong emotions are like a storm and the person experiencing the emotions is like a tree. The limbs may blow violently, but the trunk stays steady and strong. He tells the children to focus on their trunk to find their strength and stability during strong emotions. Eventually, the storm will pass.

Yes. I am worlds better than I was this time last night. Because that storm ended. Other, smaller storms hit today. But I tried very hard to remain steady despite the violent emotions.

My body is telling me to go to sleep now. So I will end this missive here. Because night will shift into day when there are things that I must do. Now is the time for rest.