Guess what?! We might have to be evacuated tomorrow if Earl decides to come up the sound instead of veering out toward the right. I've never been evacuated before. Although, really, I guess it's only exciting since our apartments aren't really at risk where they are (north side of the island, soundside, up on some dunes - probably the highest elevation on the island. seriously)....I'm still going to pack all my most important things and be ready to take them home. wow. Kind of hard to look around my room and imagine it being destroyed when I return, but I don't really think that will happen. I hope not.
I hope you all are safe wherever you are. I've recently learned from various events in my life - and the lives of people I know - that you absolutely cannot imagine what is about to happen, and how your life might be changed by it. Or even ended, sadly. I've always found the phrase carpe diem too...brief to encompass the weight of the concept, but I think E.E. Cummings touches on it when he writes,
"history immeasurably is / wealthier by a single sweet day’s death." I've been trying to live more consciously recently - to not do things I would regret, to do things I would regret not doing, to love openly, and to be kind at all moments (because why should we be anything else?).
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
In which Audrey goes exploring
wow. the past few days have been packed with lots of exciting things. I think that's how the whole semester will be!!
Here are some pictures from the house we went to on Thursday evening:
Saturday was pretty low key.... in the evening we went to a fish fry at the Outdoors Outfitters in downtown Manteo. My parents stayed at their B&B (Outdoors Inn, right around the corner) for a few days after dropping me & my stuff off, and absolutely loved it. They kayaked and biked around through this outfit, so if you're interested, ask them about it. I'm sure they'll recommend it highly. Anyway, they were having a free fish fry on Saturday, so most of us from the program went. It was a gorgeous evening - sunny and about 80 degrees. perfect!! There was freshly fried hushpuppies & fish as well as homemade slaw, cucumbers with some sauce, cake, and baked beans. NOM NOM. Once we were all there, we constituted about a third of the party, but it was so great. Several of us were interested in various things they do (kayaking, diving, etc), so we talked to Pam, one of the owners, for a while. My friend Chris was in the area from Chapel Hill for the weekend because he lives down by Hatteras. He's actually the one who convinced me to do this program! (he did it last fall.) So he met us at the fish fry, which was great, and then showed Nathalie (another girl in the program) and I a really cool secret beach at Fort Raleigh, on the north end of the island. A bunch of us hung out that evening - with a number of his friends, too - and had a lot of fun.
Sunday afternoon I bike up to Fort Raleigh to explore [the rest of] it. It's a national historic site where the so-called Lost Colony originally set up camp. Where'd they go?? It really is kind of interesting to think about. It was so cool to walk through the woods there and imagine 16th century colonists wandering around trying to figure life out in the New World.
After walking around there, I headed over to the Elizabethan Gardens. We're living in the apartments that the Lost Colony keeps for its performers, so we have Lost Colony company cards! Which means I got in to the gardens for free. It mostly consisted of trails lined by plants (some of you could have appreciated those more than I, but I did do my best to be interested in them)...but my favorite part was a sunken garden in a very distinctly English style. I had fun playing with my new camera...
There were also a couple groves of beautiful live oaks:
more garden.
statue of Virginia Dare, supposedly the first European child born here....but then she disappeared!!
Today, Monday, we went exploring... our task was to go to some random town on the Outer or Inner Banks, so my group chose Duck, which is on the very outer banks (as opposed to Manteo, which is shielded from the ocean by a barrier island...where Nags Head is), north of Kitty Hawk. It was interesting because it was very unlike the Nags Head/Kill Devil Hills/Kitty Hawk stretch, which is extremely strip-oriented development: strip malls, long straight strips of beach, and rows and rows of beach houses. Pretty unpleasant, if you ask me. Duck, though, was more like Manteo - more suburban feeling (which is, oddly, a compliment of sorts in this case)...houses were organized in a way that felt more like neighborhoods, and there were TREES! Everything - even gas stations and touristy surf shops - was hugged by trees. It made a huge difference. There was also a distinct town center/commercial area (CBD, if you know what I mean...), which gave it a more bike/pedestrian friendly feeling. (A gallery owner described the town to us in this way, and I was interested to see that the bike/walking 'lane' was 1. marked with an HOV rhombus (geometry! Jay-Z!) and 2. literally RIGHT next to the highway.
what.
okay sorry for the planning tangent.... We finished with lots of time to spare, so we headed up to Corolla (pronounced, for some reason, "kuh-rah-luh") to meet another group. We were both in four wheel drive vehicles, so we could drive up the beach after the paved road ends. We drove up the beach and then back into the inland of the island...where we saw some wild horses! One had an egret standing on its back but he flew away before I could get the picture. I did get a shot of a colt and mother, though -
We went swimming for a bit there and then Robb (who was driving our group) let me drive his car! So I four wheeled down the beach, which was so fun!! Never thought I'd get to do that. We headed straight to the Manteo airport because we were going FLYING!
in this little guy.
Jockey Ridge on a skinny stretch of the Outer Banks
o hai
ship wrecks RIGHT off shore
solid development all the way up the coast :(
these houses were once quite a ways back from the water but with the erosion rate of 7 - 10 feet per year, they're as water front as it gets now. most have been abandoned....probably a good thing, given that Earl (the hurricane coming more or less towards us) could wipe them out.
mix of tides just outside Oregon Inlet - the blue on the left is the ocean (Gulf Stream + Labrador Current) and the green is the salty-fresh water from the sound
looking south toward Hatteras
just inside Oregon Inlet
This last picture is actually from last night, but it seemed like a nice image to end with...
The vestiges of a simple but beautiful sunset on our beach. Reminds me of Monet.
. . .
In case you'd like to see more pictures, you can go to my Facebook album (even without an account!) here.
Here are some pictures from the house we went to on Thursday evening:
Saturday was pretty low key.... in the evening we went to a fish fry at the Outdoors Outfitters in downtown Manteo. My parents stayed at their B&B (Outdoors Inn, right around the corner) for a few days after dropping me & my stuff off, and absolutely loved it. They kayaked and biked around through this outfit, so if you're interested, ask them about it. I'm sure they'll recommend it highly. Anyway, they were having a free fish fry on Saturday, so most of us from the program went. It was a gorgeous evening - sunny and about 80 degrees. perfect!! There was freshly fried hushpuppies & fish as well as homemade slaw, cucumbers with some sauce, cake, and baked beans. NOM NOM. Once we were all there, we constituted about a third of the party, but it was so great. Several of us were interested in various things they do (kayaking, diving, etc), so we talked to Pam, one of the owners, for a while. My friend Chris was in the area from Chapel Hill for the weekend because he lives down by Hatteras. He's actually the one who convinced me to do this program! (he did it last fall.) So he met us at the fish fry, which was great, and then showed Nathalie (another girl in the program) and I a really cool secret beach at Fort Raleigh, on the north end of the island. A bunch of us hung out that evening - with a number of his friends, too - and had a lot of fun.
Sunday afternoon I bike up to Fort Raleigh to explore [the rest of] it. It's a national historic site where the so-called Lost Colony originally set up camp. Where'd they go?? It really is kind of interesting to think about. It was so cool to walk through the woods there and imagine 16th century colonists wandering around trying to figure life out in the New World.
After walking around there, I headed over to the Elizabethan Gardens. We're living in the apartments that the Lost Colony keeps for its performers, so we have Lost Colony company cards! Which means I got in to the gardens for free. It mostly consisted of trails lined by plants (some of you could have appreciated those more than I, but I did do my best to be interested in them)...but my favorite part was a sunken garden in a very distinctly English style. I had fun playing with my new camera...
There were also a couple groves of beautiful live oaks:
more garden.
statue of Virginia Dare, supposedly the first European child born here....but then she disappeared!!Today, Monday, we went exploring... our task was to go to some random town on the Outer or Inner Banks, so my group chose Duck, which is on the very outer banks (as opposed to Manteo, which is shielded from the ocean by a barrier island...where Nags Head is), north of Kitty Hawk. It was interesting because it was very unlike the Nags Head/Kill Devil Hills/Kitty Hawk stretch, which is extremely strip-oriented development: strip malls, long straight strips of beach, and rows and rows of beach houses. Pretty unpleasant, if you ask me. Duck, though, was more like Manteo - more suburban feeling (which is, oddly, a compliment of sorts in this case)...houses were organized in a way that felt more like neighborhoods, and there were TREES! Everything - even gas stations and touristy surf shops - was hugged by trees. It made a huge difference. There was also a distinct town center/commercial area (CBD, if you know what I mean...), which gave it a more bike/pedestrian friendly feeling. (A gallery owner described the town to us in this way, and I was interested to see that the bike/walking 'lane' was 1. marked with an HOV rhombus (geometry! Jay-Z!) and 2. literally RIGHT next to the highway.
what.okay sorry for the planning tangent.... We finished with lots of time to spare, so we headed up to Corolla (pronounced, for some reason, "kuh-rah-luh") to meet another group. We were both in four wheel drive vehicles, so we could drive up the beach after the paved road ends. We drove up the beach and then back into the inland of the island...where we saw some wild horses! One had an egret standing on its back but he flew away before I could get the picture. I did get a shot of a colt and mother, though -
We went swimming for a bit there and then Robb (who was driving our group) let me drive his car! So I four wheeled down the beach, which was so fun!! Never thought I'd get to do that. We headed straight to the Manteo airport because we were going FLYING!
in this little guy.
Jockey Ridge on a skinny stretch of the Outer Banks
o hai
ship wrecks RIGHT off shore
solid development all the way up the coast :(
these houses were once quite a ways back from the water but with the erosion rate of 7 - 10 feet per year, they're as water front as it gets now. most have been abandoned....probably a good thing, given that Earl (the hurricane coming more or less towards us) could wipe them out.
mix of tides just outside Oregon Inlet - the blue on the left is the ocean (Gulf Stream + Labrador Current) and the green is the salty-fresh water from the sound
looking south toward Hatteras
just inside Oregon InletThis last picture is actually from last night, but it seemed like a nice image to end with...
The vestiges of a simple but beautiful sunset on our beach. Reminds me of Monet.. . .
In case you'd like to see more pictures, you can go to my Facebook album (even without an account!) here.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Manteo
I'm finally in Manteo! After several years of on-and-off deliberation, I'm here. We've only been here a few days but it seems like we've already done so much. Tuesday evening there was a cookout for us & our parents, held at the beautiful home of the chair of the community advisory board. Most of the faculty for our classes was there as well as most of the board, and it was a wonderful evening of introductions and getting to know everyone.
Nothing was scheduled for us Wednesday morning to give us time to finish unpacking, but since I had finished late Tuesday evening, I decided to ride into Manteo (about 3 miles each way) to check out the bike trails on the island and explore the downtown area. First, I explored the forest and beach around our apartment complex...
our building, Thomas Hariot.
our personal beach, as seen from the top of a dune.
me & Lucille, my bike.
the waterfront in Manteo.
Thursday morning we went kayaking in Milltail Creek in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. My parents always tease me about hating kayaking, but it's like hiking - I don't hate it, I just like to go at my own pace. At first we went through wide lake- and river-like areas, and then got into some hairier sections where we were surrounded by marsh grass and sort of had to gondolier our way through.
learning about the history of the area.
hanging out in my kayak.
getting our feet under us, so to speak. just starting out...
Thursday evening we went to a beach house on Nags Head rented by the extended family of the program director. It was one of the old houses (turn of the century) and was beautiful. We arrived just as the sun was setting behind the house... we met everyone - again, all so incredibly kind and interesting - and then jumped in the water. We'd been to Nags Head earlier in the week but the rip tide was so strong that they wouldn't let us swim, so this was our first dip in the actual ocean....and what a beautiful first dip!! The water there is a deep teal and the sky is always a gorgeous deep [Carolina] blue, dotted with white clouds. It was such a lovely evening.
Today was mostly discussions, although the one in the afternoon was held in a gazebo right on the water in a marsh. Beautiful! We spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach in Nags Head again, and I think we're going to grill out tonight. We have the weekend free, so we're going to explore the area further!
Nothing was scheduled for us Wednesday morning to give us time to finish unpacking, but since I had finished late Tuesday evening, I decided to ride into Manteo (about 3 miles each way) to check out the bike trails on the island and explore the downtown area. First, I explored the forest and beach around our apartment complex...
our building, Thomas Hariot.
our personal beach, as seen from the top of a dune.
me & Lucille, my bike.
the waterfront in Manteo.Thursday morning we went kayaking in Milltail Creek in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. My parents always tease me about hating kayaking, but it's like hiking - I don't hate it, I just like to go at my own pace. At first we went through wide lake- and river-like areas, and then got into some hairier sections where we were surrounded by marsh grass and sort of had to gondolier our way through.
learning about the history of the area.
hanging out in my kayak.
getting our feet under us, so to speak. just starting out...Thursday evening we went to a beach house on Nags Head rented by the extended family of the program director. It was one of the old houses (turn of the century) and was beautiful. We arrived just as the sun was setting behind the house... we met everyone - again, all so incredibly kind and interesting - and then jumped in the water. We'd been to Nags Head earlier in the week but the rip tide was so strong that they wouldn't let us swim, so this was our first dip in the actual ocean....and what a beautiful first dip!! The water there is a deep teal and the sky is always a gorgeous deep [Carolina] blue, dotted with white clouds. It was such a lovely evening.
Today was mostly discussions, although the one in the afternoon was held in a gazebo right on the water in a marsh. Beautiful! We spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach in Nags Head again, and I think we're going to grill out tonight. We have the weekend free, so we're going to explore the area further!
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