Poco Mountain Girl

Friday the kids and I drove to Wilmington with our friends Linda, Nick, and Sophie to spend the weekend at the beach. Wrightsville Beach was where I took the kids when we first moved to NC, and we hit that first, staying till dark, playing in the waves and filling our swimsuits with sand.

The salt spray has a way of ironing out all the pinched feelings of life–especially life in the suburbs. Meet the school bus at 8:45 and again at 4:15, put the trash out Monday, recycling Wednesday, mow the lawn (and do it right!), try to hammer your copper more quietly, check the mail–it’s 11:30, lock the door, run to the store, keep the kids from yelling too loudly, turn up the AC, turn it down, don’t take too many walks or the neighbors might think you’re weird.

But on the beach, nobody really cares. It’s a wonderful, free feeling. You can leave your bags for hours, and nobody touches them–and as you walk to the ocean on the dirt trails from the street, there are lines of flip-flops where people ditch them to run barefoot and then find them again at the end of the day.

Saturday we went to Carolina Beach. It was hot and we stayed in the water for hours–Nick and Zia far out where the water was still only waist high, Sophie and Cash on the edge of the shore where the tide slid sheets of water away from them and then came crashing back, sending them rolling and squealing. Linda and I were just big kids, too–swinging our kids over the waves dozens of times, getting knocked over, burying ourselves in the almost-liquid sand. On the salty little midway we got shaved ice and played at an arcade, where Nick won 1,000 tickets and the kids all picked out prizes. It was kid heaven.

Holden Beach was our favorite. It has a wild feel of solitude and peacefulness that is unrivaled by the others, and it seemed like a herd of wild horses might come flying out of the surf and race by.

There are tide pools that swirl and eddy and sandbars that grow as the tide goes out, leaving treasures of shells and coral and driftwood and tiny snapping things. The ocean is a whole world in itself, and the little things left on the beach are like a trail of bread crumbs that beckon you in.

We filled Ziplock bags with the things we gathered, and all the intricate shapes and textures made me imagine what I could make using them as raw materials. But the truth is, they are already perfect little artworks in themselves, and would be hard to improve on. I’ll still try, though. 😉

We drove home Sunday evening happy, sunburned, and saturated with saltwater and sky. Linda found a conch shell just after I wished for one, and now I can have the ocean in my ear whenever I want.

I have to say, as much as I miss the mountains, the ocean does a pretty good job of filling that hole.

And so we’ve begun another week in the suburbs, with some extra chillax and a bit less picayune worry about doing things just right and by the rules.

After all, we did just came back from a little reflection of heaven.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2017 at 2:02 am and is filed under Nature, North Carolina, The Great Outdoors, Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.