Beach Bummin in the Banks

Even endless summer can’t live up to its namesake as the future rolls on, closer, closer, until before you know it you’re in it. I came to Hatteras as an escape, a last gasp, in part I think to figure out what the hell I was even escaping from. My own decisions? My past, present, future? The stifling, smothering social scene filled with those I love? Sometimes I think I was meant to be a lighthouse keeper, silently observing the world and doing my part to keep the lights on for the safe passage of others’ voyages. All I can do is play the hand I’m dealt, and to play is to risk losing. But at some point, you have to play.

I snatched up a cheap hippie shack airbnb at the last second, with three days off and nothing to do, nobody to be, I went south towards nowhere. No hesitation, which is progress in its own way. My loose semblance of a plan was to write, drink wine, meditate, and listen to whatever the ocean might’ve had to say. My wind cleared my mind out as I barreled down the thin strip of sand Route 12 lays on. I stopped for groceries more out of habit than need. As the cashier checked my ID, she remarked her son had the same birthday. Small world, but I never know how to respond to that. I exchanged pleasantries and that was about the extent of conversation I’d have for the rest of the trip. 

Hatteras’ lighthouse was under repair, getting a fresh coat of paint and a new fresnel lens. It felt wrong seeing her in this state of undress. Improvement requires vulnerability, to be laid bare at points, even if the improvement is just returning to the state you were once in. Probably reading into that too much. I got to the digs around 5pm, leaving only once more to grab pizza from down the street before spending the rest of the night drinking wine and finishing up the North Country series. It was a weirdly lit house, either too bright or too dark, furnished with the hottest looks of 1973. The interior was like grass stained hands after a shower – you’ve cleaned them, but they’re still dirty, and you just have to accept that’s the best that can be done. I prefer it that way. 

Wednesday morning the sky opened up as Zeus carpetbombed my vicinity with bolts after bolts after bolts. Eventually lightning made way for light as I got a small daypack ready to go down to Ocracoke. Route 12 was intermittently flooded as I drove down to the ferry to cross the Hatteras inlet. A reminder of how precarious life is down there, there’s no outwitting the ocean. 

Rain gave way to blistering sun as the ferry made its way across. I stood at the side of the ferry and gazed into the waters and wondered if anything gazed back. After an hour and two miles of progress, I disembarked on Ocracoke. I wouldn’t call it one of the most isolated places in America, but it could be if you played your cards right. Everything’s slower in Ocracoke, golf carts and bicycles reigning on its flooded streets. I’d learned to drive there years ago in a golf cart, I felt almost sacrilegious driving Baby Blue down to find parking the traverse the rest by foot. The weird thing was, though, the golf carts had mutated since I’d last been there to practically take up the same real estate as cars. I don’t know why they don’t just ban motorized transit in village limits, with exceptions for residents and deliveries, but that’s not my call to make. 

The sun was now blasting down in full force as I wandered around, following spots of shade as they were granted to me. The sweat rolled down my face, flooding it like the streets before me. I stopped at a Mexican food stand, hoping the long lines were a sign it’d be worth the wait. I scarfed my burrito down so fast I’m not quite sure if it was worth the wait.

I made my way down to Ocracoke’s lighthouse – the second oldest operating one in the nation, 202 years old. Despite being nowhere near as big nor as grand as the other lighthouses of the Outer Banks, she had a certain honesty and simplicity that elevated her above the others. Nestled between homes and shops, this was Ocracoke’s lighthouse, not just a lighthouse on Ocracoke. A cat came up to me and we chatted for a while and I thought of my cat, Endor, back at home. I hope he knew he was one of the few things I wasn’t trying to escape. In the end, it’s always me and him. 

I walked around for a while more until my cold-blooded body couldn’t take it anymore and led me back to the car to catch the ferry back to Hatteras. On the ride back, I didn’t bother getting out as I went between reading more of Kerouac’s Big Sur and attempting to sleep. I ate leftovers for dinner before heading back out to photograph the sunset over the sound. 

Back at home base, I wondered why exactly I had come. It’s been harder, lately. There’s this song, Hotel TV, with this repeated line of “can I get some rest” and there’s a barren honesty to that I can relate with. I’m just tired. And I don’t know when I won’t be. Maybe I’ll be tired until I’m asleep and I just need to suck it up and deal with it. What’s more annoying is I don’t have the right to feel this way. At least it doesn’t feel that way. I think that’s what troubles me the most. I live with my friends, I work with my friends at a job I like where I get to shoot the shit on gear and the outdoors all day. I go on cool trips and do cool things. I’m about to go to grad school somewhere I dreamed about going as a kid and never thought I’d be smart enough for as a teenager. In a lot of ways, isn’t this everything I could’ve ever wanted? Am I not who I set out to be? And now that I’m here, now that I’ve become myself, I’m empty. That’s not to say I’m awfully unhappy, I have my laughs and smiles, everyday joys. Life is beautiful and I try to retain that outlook. But there’s something off. Why is there something off? Why, when life is gaining its momentum and I’m rocketing into the next stages, why do I want to just get the hell off? Not off of life, it’s not that dramatic, but just escape and become some silent monk in a far off mountain range making beer all day, writing manuscripts until my handwriting becomes half legible. 

I don’t mean to be ungrateful and if anything half of why it pisses me off is because I am grateful and I don’t get why there’s this cognitive dissonance. Is this just what existence is? The grass always looking greener? But I think, in part at least, it’s because now there’s stakes. There’s things to lose. It’s easier when there’s nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nowhere to be, but that’s not better. It’s just easier. All I know is there’s no backing down and no slowing down. It’s up to me to find the balance. 

Thursday morning came peacefully. As it turned out, Anna, an old friend of mine from the Richmond store, was in Kill Devil Hills so we planned on meeting up as I made my way back north. I made a few photography pit stops on the way back up and grabbed a breakfast burrito across from Jockey’s Ridge. Still haven’t had one that compares to what they have out west. Don’t know why. Somebody should’ve figured it out by now.

It was funny meeting Anna here of all places – she’s been in Utah for the better part of a year now, and just happened to be in the area on vacation with friends. We caught up along with her friend Ace for about half an hour along the crowded Kitty Hawk shores, lifeguard stations signaling we weren’t in the southern frontier anymore.

The drive home was unremarkable as I shuffled between songs, unsure of what wavelength to stay on. No raucous ending. Just getting home to my cat. I was glad to see him.