~Welcome to Eric's Little Slice O' Heaven~

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The North Carolina Coast
"I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife.
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick is over."
John Masefield

I grew up in eastern North Carolina, and as long as I can remember, the coast of North Carolina has had this mystical appeal to me. Even as I grew up--and away--from the islands, I always found solace just by imagining that I was walking the beaches on a warm spring night, washed by a gentle sea breeze, the full moon pregnant and hanging over the Atlantic.....

And, finally, I got the chance to move there. For five years, I lived in Kitty Hawk, the beach a few steps east of my front door, the site of the Wright Brothers' first flight a mile south, and the placid waters of Albemarle Sound just outside my back door. My time there only cemented my love of this place. Despite the unprecedented development that's occured along these shores, it is still a wild and desolate place, where one can ride down to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and still stake out a deserted stretch of beach on the Fourth of July.

There are ghosts here...Blackbeard, who had his head uncermoniously removed at Ocrcoke Inlet in 1718...the Lost Colonists, who disappeared from Roanoke Island wthout a trace in 1587...doomed ship captains whose vessels were beaten to pieces in a raging hurricane.... Confederate soldiers who died in the vain attempt to keep Fort Fisher--and Wilmington--from falling into Union hands...the Wright Brothers, whose flimsy canvas and stick plane rose majectically above the sands on a frigid December day....

And there is enough nature left unspoiled here to give one hope that maybe the planet has a chance after all: two National Seashores, countless wildlife refuges, state parks, and development that is closely regulated by the State. It's not uncommon to find whole starfish in the surf, or catch a glimpse of wild black bear in the woods, or hike to the top of a 100 foot sand dune.

 So take a second out of your busy dog-eat-dog day and come with me....to the sea....and coast awhile.