A Theoretical Guide to Beach Bumming

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It's mid-afternoon and I'm flopped face down on the bed whining that "I just don't know how to be at the beach." Others seem to immediately blend into the beach-scape the moment their toes hit the sand, but I feel like an interloper. To further complicate matters, I'm already worrying about how I'm going to frame this trip when I get home. Absolutely no sympathy is given to those having a miserable time at a beach; you are, after-all, at "the beach," in all its exposed, sandy, relentlessly windy, quintessential glory. But I can't get out of my head long enough to have a frolic-y good time.

I had made the erroneous assumption that because this long string of barrier islands on the eastern edge of North Carolina is maintained by the National Park System, it would be relatively untouched. Ahh assumptions. The bedfellow of expectations. Both conspiring to turn every trip into a potential disappointment. I don't know what I anticipated (the poetic notion of watching the sun slowly rise from beneath the water-kissed horizon? of waves rhythmically lapping the shores? then what if that's all there was?), but I had not anticipated that this seemingly random and remote stretch was such a popular (and developed) destination. We had inadvertently headed into the heavily marketed OBX - the acronymic "Outer Banks." I didn't know the Outer Banks was a place. I did know that if you Goggled "camping on the beach," gorgeous pictures of solitary tents dotting an uninhabited coastline appeared under headings for Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores. That is what I prepared for; that is what I wanted.

So despite the elbow-to-elbow neighborhoods of multi-story vacation homes, disregarding both the highly commercialized and force-ably quaint tourist shops, ignoring the veritable parking lot of beach-driving off-road vehicles at waters edge, we (should I say "I") remained undeterred in our quest to experience the "natural" beauty and "historic" nature of these remote islands. Because we tourists travelers are a stubborn lot. One pre-conceived idea about what we should experience and by-golly if we won't do our darnedest to structure our trip towards our expectations, even if that pursuit obstructs what we're after in the first place.

We spent the first few nights at the Oregon Inlet Campground, our tent pitched up against the dunes. The beach adjacent to Oregon Inlet is, admittedly, at sunrise and sunset, precisely as one would idealize a beach. Soft clean sand between the toes, brown pelicans and terns skimming the waves, seashells littering the shore and the salty sea air bathing our skin. But a Mid-Atlantic beach is not designed to be a place for contemplation; it is a resource to be tamed and a recreational backdrop for the pursuit of entertainment. This so clashed with our ingrained Northwest attitude that natural areas are designated primarily for the purpose of conservation (the location is the entertainment) that we were woefully unprepared. We didn't have fishing poles, buckets, nets or coolers full of beer. We didn't have frisbees or a group of friends to stages games with. We didn't even have a kite. We hitch-hiked out to the beaches accessible only by AWD permit, thinking they might offer something different, but while the beaches of white sand were perfectly suited to driving, the presence of vehicles made them little suited to anything else. We trudged the several miles back to town, exposed and exhausted, and contemplated out next move over some forgettable beer and (decent, but imported) oysters.

Nearby Kitty Hawk is where the Wright Brothers made the first successful controlled flight in a powered airplane. Though the monument is little more a large hill with a large field and a few models, we came anyway. We saw. We took a few photos. "Look at us!" we could say. "We get the real significance of this place. Not the beach. The history." We did the same thing at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. Visitor center denoting the mysterious lost settlement of Roanoke Island? Check. Stone slab commemorating the birth of Virginia Dare, the first English born colonist in the Americas? Check. Having an unforgettable time on our summer holiday? Che ... er, wait.

A while back I watched a TedX presentation by Daniel Kahneman on how experience and memory influence happiness. He discussed the disconnect between what we experience and what we remember, suggesting that vacations are often planned more for the benefit of our memory-reliant selves than for the present. At one point he wonders whether, in the absence of memories - no photographs, total amnesia - whether we'd choose the same vacation. It's a question that stuck with me, and sitting in the closed visitor center parking lot, wondering where to go next, I ask myself: if I couldn't tell anyone where we were or what we had done, would I be doing the same thing? The answer was an unequivocal no.

So we chucked the plans, as well as some pretenses, and headed into town. We played a round of miniature golf at a course chosen specifically because it had an imposing pirate ship and giant waterfall. We split some frozen custard at the Kill Devil beach-hut. We shopped for beachwear in one of the tacky tourist shops and ate the most amazing soft-shell crab outside a seafood shack. I spent at least fifteen minutes staring at the barbecue sauce aisle in the grocery store, ultimately deciding upon a vinegar-based sauce called "Carolina Treat." And as the labor of pre-emptively crafting the perfect vacation travelogue transitioned into the leisure of just letting it unfold, it finally felt like we were on vacation. Once we let the locale dictate to us what we should do, rather than allow our misguided assumptions to dictate what the location should offer, we had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Note to self: stop having so many expectations (an impossible task, I know. How Andras manages it remains a mystery).

We spent the remainder of the week on Ocracoke Island at the southern end of the park. The NPS campground is the only place to stay on the island outside of town, making it a pleasantly quiet get-away. While we never did get to camp on the beach, we did roast s'mores over our beach-side bonfire and pick our way back amidst the nocturnal scuttling legs and beady eyes of ghost-crabs. Camping on the beach Relaxing on the beach as the sun goes down - check!

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Post Script:

Fresh, local seafood was the one desire we refused to compromise on. Though the water teams with life, the popularity of sport-fishing, and the fact that almost everyone comes prepared to catch there own, means there is surprisingly little for sale. Even the seafood restaurants import their inventory frozen from global suppliers - a travesty, which has not only decimated the local fishing community (a one-time mainstay of the economy) but has also de-incentived the maintenance of local waters.

So here's our shout-out to Ocracoke Fish & Seafood Company, which operates as the Co-Op for the local fisherman and where a personable lady resident sells the catch-of-the-day every morning at 11am. We struck up a chat while I browsed the remaining inventory and tried to calculate the upper limit of how much seafood two people could reasonably consume - cobia, pompano, wahoo, mackerel, all warm water Atlantic species we know little about. The fish are literally only an hour or two out of the water when they hit the counter. Fisherman go out at day-break and their catch goes to sale that morning.

The tuna we had was so fresh it made for one of the most delicious meals we've had to date. But it was the first that had been caught in weeks. An unpredictable inventory requires a wider breadth of knowledge and skill to prepare, and mid-level restaurants thrive off routinized labor even when doing so blunts the uniqueness of the region they purport to represent. One of the many tourism-related ironies, on an island flocked to for seafood, the fish and prawns must now come from somewhere else in order to support demand.

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Photos

Bodie Island Light Station
The 1872 lighthouse powered with a first-order Fresnel lens, helping ships navigate through the treacherous "Graveyard of the Atlantic" for over one-hundred years.

Sunrise over the Atlantic
Gorgeous early-morning sunrise near Oregon Inlet campground

Magnificent Sky
Sunrise on Oregon Inlet

Beach Bonfire & S'mores
Just wouldn't be camping without a roasted marshmallows over an open flame

Best Meal Ever?
Grilling up the freshest seafood - tuna, cobia and prawns all caught earlier this morning by local fisherman

Inchworm
One of our many camp visitors

Maritime Forest on Ocracoke
The maritime forest, and inlet, where the pirate Blackbeard allegedly anchored in between raids on Carolina waterways.

Sand Everywhere
No shoes in the tent!

Eat Local
Andras with local prawns marinated in "Carolina Treet" vinegary-pepper cooking sauce

Drink Local
Stephanie with some Carolina brewed ale

The Classic Shot
Jumping for joy

Oregon Inlet
Pathway from our tent through the dunes

Braving the wind at Ocracoke Day Use area

Sunrise behind the Dunes
Walking to the beach from Oregon Inlet campground

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

North Carolina Beaches
As I read your blog I could feel many emotions and they were in constant flux as your mind fought between what you had hoped for and what you found. Joy came when you accepted where you were for what it had to offer. Glad you found some fantastic seafood and amazing sunsets.

[Stephanie and Andras]

Constant Flux
Certainly! One of these days I'll throw a dart at a map and just head off, with no planning and little time for expectations to accumulate, but until then, I'm finding I need at least 3 days to transition my mind into relaxation mode.

[Home and Away]

Great blog and writing...
with profound insights. I camped at Kill Devil Hill in 1970 and rented a house for a family reunion in 1998 and enjoyed just having fun...including 4th of July fireworks on the beach.

[Stephanie and Andras]

Thanks for the kind words! I imagine the idea I had in my mind was fairly accurate in the 1970s - 40 years of development makes quite a difference. Just having fun is certainly the right attitude. I can see it making a wonderful gathering spot for large groups and families, for sure.

[aspiringnomad]

Only this matters
Doesn't matter what you did or how you did it. In fact, you didn't even need to caption this picture "Classic Shot" or "Jumping for joy." That we can see AND evidence of some ocean in the background. Mission accomplished!

[Stephanie and Andras]

Proper proof
Now everyone can see how well I did the beach thing. I still don't know for whom "Jumping for Joy" is a natural reaction to a place (not me, for sure, as the dozens of out-takes will attest). I have much more fun twirling around in the sand with my arms stretched outward, spinning like a top, and leaping out into the surf. Or, you know, turning my back towards the water with my head down, slightly frowning, and bracing for the wind, but both those scenarios make for terrible photos. Who brings an SLR to a beach anyhow? Too much sand and no place to put it. But none of that self-consciousness in this shot, no sir - mission accomplished, indeed!

[Donna and Neil]

A shame about the seafood
That's very sad about seafood having to be imported to an area which used to be rich in it. I suppose that's why in the EU there is a relatively strict fishing quota with no-fish zones and certain species which must not be fished/thrown back if under a certain age. I wonder if instituting the same kind of thing would get the seafood population back up?

[Stephanie and Andras]

A shame, indeed
In Ocracoke, at least, it's didn't seem like it was the seafood population that was threatened, but rather the labor force and chain of distribution needed to get it out of the water and to market. A large part is mis-managed expectations on behalf of the American consumer (most of the tourists to Ocracoke, anyhow, are American) - the notion that you can always eat what you want, when you want it, season or region be damned. Even at the seafood co-op, the manager told us about a couple who had, just the other day, complained loudly that they didn't open until 11am because she wanted fresh seafood to take to the beach earlier that day, and she had to explain that it took *time* for the fisherman to catch fresh seafood and bring it ashore; that was the earliest they regularly expected to have inventory. There are some state regulations in areas that have historically been over-fished or over-harvested. I don't know if it's exclusively a supplier driven problem though, but rather a consumption driven one. The good news there means that our better informed decisions can make smaller, but non-negligible, ripples while advocating for larger changes in the system. No easy short term solution, though. It's going to require a cultural shift in thought regarding where our food comes from, and thinking it back all the way to the environmental source, not just the supermarket.