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| 7.1 FEATURES |
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The Wild Island
of Wind, Water, and Sand
Cape Hatteras Island
By Diane Buccheri
What is it about this place? There is a wild mystery lingering here, underlying all of the island life. There is a peaceful serenity too. Not fully civilized, not yet (never, hopefully) commercialized, the island has a life of its own.
wild heart, wild eyes, wild mind and desires,
flying soul
My first traveling here was when I was a college student and I packed my gear with my books and got into the van one evening. No, I didn’t drive. I read Shakespeare, I believe, by a flashlight while the driver and I drank coca-cola and chewed gum to get through the heart of the night with our eyes open. Then we drank coffee to greet the new day after our long night’s journey. So preoccupied with getting through my daily duties then, I didn’t know to where I was journeying, just that it was a good windsurfing place and it was down south, a long ways, I found out.
Upon arriving after sitting through several highways and bridges, I nearly fell out of the van, in 1987, to a land beyond what I’d ever seen before. It was 7 a.m. and the light was a gray-yellow luminescence. The wind whipped. There were low bushes and dunes, windswept sands, then the wild ocean churning its fury to a gray froth.
The seagulls are screaming,
careening,
the wind is whipping, howling,
the sea is lashing its fury
against the grains of sand,
pounding and shifting.
Why is all so angry?
Where . . . was . . . I?
"Rig!" "What are you rigging?" Came the voices of reality, of my friends who had caravanned the night’s trip, one van following the next, all in a row, for twelve hours. They seemed to know where they were, how we got here, and now it’s time to rig!
So we did. Out we went, on our smallest boards and sails. Not in the wicked ocean, oh no, we weren’t that naïve, even me, eyes still blinking from Shakespeare’s rhythms and rhymes. To the Sound! And we cruised. Back and forth. We flew. We screamed and hollered and welcomed in the new day. The sun rose and we gave homage as its rays led us across the waves. Blue, silver, and gold – quite a change from the gray-yellow that we stepped into upon our arrival.
That was thirteen years ago and in the meanwhile, I’ve figured out where the island is, and have become familiar with its history, its present day living, and possibly a glimmer of its future offerings.
My first morning here, after the early sail, we needed to come off our sleepless caffeine, sugar, salt water, and wind high so off to the world’s biggest breakfast we went. I was with several big men. One was fondly referred to as the "Fat Boy from the Caribbean", one was an athletic go-getter, and one was a long-time body builder. First, I asked what the poles were for. Poles? Yeah, sticking up from all these trucks. Guess we were at a fisherman’s hang-out breakfast place and I was still in a funk. Dazed and confused. Evidently, the fishermen get out early in the morning to catch the breakfasting fish during dawn then breakfast themselves. You learn something everyday, I thought.
I won the contest. The breakfast eating contest, that is. Having eaten the most eggs and pancakes, my stomach ached with the rest of the week’s stay, despite all the sailing to come.
Thirteen years later, I still eat breakfast at the same place, occasionally when I don’t have a morning windsurfing lesson to teach, or when it’s the dead of winter and there’s barely a soul in sight. The same waitresses, local women, still smile and pour coffee, offering grits, eggs over easy, or whate’er’ll please ya, sir, ma’am. Thaank ya much. Com’oin back now, y’all hear? Oh – we’ll be back!
Did you know that windsurfers flock here primarily from Canada? Speaking their French, intense on the wind, catching every breath on the water, they travel often and stay as long as they can. And the Americans come to windsurf primarily from Michigan, the northeast, southeast, a few from Colorado, and those stopping here on their way out west. I was one of those and nearly moved to Colorado, then the Gorge, then San Francisco, but a voice inside kept nagging me, pulling at my heart, tempting my soul – but when, how, will you get back to Cape Hatteras? it whispered naggingly.
After years of traveling, deep restlessness, long night journeys into the days, searching and trying to be okay then knowing, oh no, it’s all wrong, I knew this was the place.
So here I came! And here I am! And will you, dear reader, be here soon? For it is a place to rest. It’s a place of exhilaration. It’s a place for your heart and soul, your body and mind.
to be a seasprite
swirling amongst seaweed
flying with the sea breezes
basking in warm beach sun
Inspiration and the wind are intermingled. In literature, wind is inspiration and the breath of life. So when the wind blows, the heart and soul of the writer is inspired with words of knowledge. Lots of that going on here if you open yourself to it.
Many artists have migrated to this island of inspiration. Perhaps they need the wildness, the serenity, and the being-away-from-civilization. The rat race can cloud your mind and take from pure being and creativity, stifling life. On the island, artists do their thing alongside the crusty fishermen. There are wonderful shops here which are truly havens into the world of life-art. Hosting carefully chosen items with utmost thought and enthusiasm, the shops speak of life. The ocean life, the romance of the sea, personal struggle, the beauty of life, it’s tragedies, comedies, and histories. They speak of raw and artful feeling.
Inspiration comes with the wind --
blow, blow, blow my friend!
I knew all these years of my restless wanderings I was struggling with modern technology and needing nature. The four elements are the most elemental and necessary to our being and no matter how much we depend on electricity the four elements, along with heart and soul, are most important. This place is a daily reminder with the strength of the elements powerfully evident all the time. The wild island of wind, water, and sand puts you out like a tiny ant, defenseless, into the middle of Mother Nature’s capacity.
When I first came here I could only access a phone by public phone booths and nearly got knocked over onto the one lane Highway 12 in a smashed-window booth during a gale storm. The phones don’t work well after enough salt has smothered and infiltrated them so my call didn’t go through anyway. Finally, vacation rental houses now have well working phones and even televisions with remote controls. That’s not to say their use is always reliable though. Somehow, things keep disturbing the lines, like wind and water.
Many searching an alternative lifestyle have found this place. Some have brought their technology with them like me and operate healthy, happy, and prosperous businesses. The local locals, the ones whose ancestors were born here, don’t like the
modern lifestyle much nor the attitude of the transplants, for the most part. They have their ways and their ways have worked
well for them for a long time, having been developed through generations and generations of mixing genes. Most of them are related, it seems. (But aren’t we all brothers and sisters? , )
Have you seen Stephen King’s The Storm? Quite a story about island life and islanders and not unlike the possibilities of Cape Hatteras. CROTOAN appears on a piece of driftwood after a devil comes to the island during a storm and steals an island child so his powers can be passed on, regenerated. The islanders are devastated. Long ago, over five hundred years past, the Crotoans lived here. Sand has covered the ancient Crotoan Indian villages similar to the island of Atlantis becoming submerged. Allegedly, the very first European Americans lived alongside the Indians in the sixteen hundreds. Evidently, enough storms and the European common cold and flu wiped out the Indians whose bodily existence completely disappeared under the sand and into the water. Eventually, Europeans managed to survive and the original families are good ol’ redneck loud talkin’, scrappin’ folk with decent and indecent behavior. Like I intimated, it’s all an education.
The members of old families have their own island fever. If they leave the island for more than a few hours, they become inflicted with a restlessness, an itch of a sort, a feeling similar to a fish out of water, and must cross the Oregon Inlet Bridge to get back on the island ground. The ground shifts constantly and always has rearranged itself geographically but so far remains. During the Ice Age the island was separated from the mainland with glaciers. Hence, the delightful Pamlico Sound – clean, shallow water filled with fish and swept by winds, extending fifty miles to the North Carolina mainland.
During the time of early English settlement, before, I believe, the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, logs were sent from this now mostly large-tree-less island in rafted form along the Gulf stream flow which deposited the log rafts in England. The English made their boats with these logs during their time of sea dominance and claimed many foreign lands as their domain. That was the beginning of the local locals’ life on the island and surely these families have stories to tell of strife, survival, joy, pain, rough living, and homey comforts. The sea is in their blood and has taken many of their family members. They know the fish, the sand is their yard, the wind and water are both friends and foes.
sounds of voices crying,
sounds of loves dying,
silently screaming,
shattering the stillness,
uprooting evil and weakness
for to reach serenity
in the far, far, far away distance . . .
Land of the Free, Sweet Liberty, is what I longed for, and I feel it flying across the windswept waters of the Graveyard of the Atlantic and when walking the beach finding old treasures on the calm days filled with peace after storms. I can live with the wildness, I can feel the deep past mystery and history still alive. I can walk with quiet sunshine and be spellbound by the dolphins gracing the waves and the seagulls laughing overhead. On a clear island night, I am awed by the array of stars and made breathless by the comets flying by. Continued Go to Part 2
Go to Part Two / Return to Content>
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