Along The Road

Cape May

Home of some of my mother's fondest childhood memories, and visited now, briefly, seventy-five years later, in the dead of winter, by her son.

I suppose the sand is pretty much the same, and the stones...

But I have the feeling that the grass may have changed some...

The Dismal Swamp

After a brief stay at Twin Oaks, I traveled on to North Carolina. Along the way I decided I had to stop at the Dismal Swamp. I mean, with a name like that, and considering my general disposition, I figured it would be a must see.

I suppose it is surprising that any of the Dismal Swamp still exists. I have no doubt that there is much less of it than what the first settlers found. Unfortunately I decided to travel along the eastern edge instead of the western. Turns out that the Dismal Swamp entrance is on the west side. The state of North Carolina is busy building a bridge across the Dismal Swamp Canal (which runs down the east side, and separates it from the adjacent farmland), and an "interpretive center" as well. But until they are done, the best you can do from the east is look at the trees that surround it.

The Outer Banks

While I was staying with Fred and Jeannie in Edenton, in the "inner banks," I decided to take a drive out to the "Outer Banks," the famous, nearly 100 mile long spit of sand that runs from Corolla (pronounced curalla) at the north, to Okracoke Island at the south. There is much early American history here, including the "lost colony," some several hundred souls that had mysteriously disappeared by the time the re-supply ship arrived from England four years later in 1584.

You will have no trouble finding colonists there now. There's been a building boom all along the outr banks, grand edifices of three and four stories, garlanded about by decks and verandas, packed cheek by jowl in every available nook, cranny, prominence, and plain old flat bit of sandy ground. It seems particularly at odds with the National Park Service, whose prediction is that within 100 years or so something like eighty percent of the Outer Banks will be under water. My guess is that, at current real estate prices, over a trillion dollars of residential and commercial real estate will be washed out into the Atlantic.

Retiring baby boomers are the likely target of the boom, and they will be well dead before their homes float out to sea, though if they choose to get buried locally their bodies may become fish food. At current rental prices (like $9000.00 per week), the building costs will no doubt have been well recovered, so maybe nobody really cares if the Atlantic decides to wipe the slate clean so they can start over.

It is, I think, a matter of a fantasy having replaced reality: the fantasy of the lone soul communing with the sea replacing the reality of having to share that lonely communion with several thousand neighbors, in between trips to the mall (one about every 10 miles or so), dining at the resort, and taking your cans and bottles to the recycling center.

Ah nature, enhanced by central air and maid service. It is, so I'm told, part of the American Dream.