Cedar Point Campground, Croatan
TV didn’t work out last night. The antenna didn’t pick up any channels, so I read a newspaper I picked up from a gas station in Indiana. Surprisingly, it had a big spread on Edgar Allen Poe, who was the first writer I remember really getting into, and who is still one of America’s greatest.
Today I mostly worked again, and it rained. But I got away with an hour of sunlight left and walked over to a nearby salt marsh, which was beautiful in a gray and desolate way in that the high salt content from the ocean tides and floods stifles most life beyond something called salt marsh cordgrass. I walked alternately on a dirt trail and an elevated wooden walkway above the marsh.
Occasionally an interpretive sign gave some details about something or other, but most of them were ruined and unreadable from, presumably, all the salt. The few I read all had a similar theme around the idea that life gives and takes away and everything dies, but then some new things come around. One line said “Living things grow, create new life, and die. Each day the sun rises and sets, the tide ebbs and flows.” The writer was probably a depressed, struggling poet (are there another kind?), forced to take a freelance job to pay the bills. Not that the sentiment isn’t accurate. Another sign said two-thirds of shrimp/crabs/clams and other commercial seafood spend some of their early lives in the relative safety of the salt marsh before making their way into the big wide ocean, where we can catch them and eat them.
There was one other person on the trail, an old guy with huge bushy eyebrows that were utterly undeterred by all the salt. He was really chatty. I mentioned Minnesota, we talked about snow, he talked about how he grew up in Ohio but loved it here in North Carolina. Politics were brought up by him and I got nervous, but he only said that some administrations support and fund national parks and forests, and some don’t. He said he was nonpartisan, but that he cared about parks, and he said that after Obama left office, they closed half the bathrooms here and you couldn’t find anyone to replace a broken doorknob to save your life.
A little farther down the trail he’d stop to watch two great egrets, pure white, long-legged and beautiful. We talked a bit more and I got the sense that he seemed to know a lot about birds and wanted to continue talking for about 20 more hours, but I was looking for some quiet and I think he sensed that. I left him standing on the wooden walkway, looking off into the distance as one egret flew away and left the other standing among the cordgrass in six inches of salt water.
As I walked back to the campground I realized I’d only left Minnesota a little over 5 days ago. It seems like I’ve been gone for weeks. I’m not sure how to explain it except that Einstein said something or other about time and distance traveled and relativity. Maybe people back in Minneapolis have aged 20 years while I’ve been gone 5 days. It is cold as shit there, so probably.
After I got back I drove into the small fishing town of Swansboro and ate some incredible clam chowder. They probably grew up down the road in the salt marsh. I wondered if they sold it to-go by the gallon.
Leave a comment