Monday Morning Memories- Outer Banks, North Carolina

OBX, oh how I love thee!

On a beautiful island along the North Carolina coast is the place where my favorite daydreams take place. It is my daydream where I am sunning on a blanket, on a quiet, clean beach, reading a book, and listening to the waves lazily kiss the shore. Just a few feet behind me is the beach house I am calling home for the week. It has 4 stories, 10 bedrooms, 2 hot tubs, private balconies, a multi-level wraparound deck, a heated pool, outside showers, 3 televisions, surround sound, a gourmet huge kitchen, and sleeps thirty. There are trips in the 4wd up to the 4×4 beach, where you can drive and spin out, and dig out, and repeat, all you want, planned for the afternoon. Lighthouses to explore. Wild horses dot the horizon. And a crab pot is in the water catching dinner for us. I am grateful to get to live out this daydream every summer with my family and friends.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina is close enough to civilization to make a quick escape, and yet far enough away to be secluded and quiet. But the memory that I am thinking of today was hardly a quiet one.

It was Labor Day Weekend 2005. The weather was calling for a possible hurricane of the East Coat, and of another one in the Gulf Coast. But no one was taking either one seriously. My friends and I had rented a beach house for the weekend, worried about gas prices and traffic in case the storm got bad, but still determined to get out of town.  When we arrived in the Outer Banks we saw considerably fewer visitors than most holiday weekends would hold. The beaches had signs forbidding us from going in the water, due to unusually high and strong waves. And I had a bad case of bronchitis.

In my mind I was justifying a trip to the beach by telling myself that the English frequently went to the shore to recover from illness. They believed (at some point in history) that a little time at the beach and in the sun would cure all sorts of coughs and ailments. And boy did I ever have a cough!

The rains came down most of the weekend, but let up just enough for us to walk along the shore, collect a few shells, skinny dip in the crazy waves under a big huge moon, watched the ghost crabs running on the beach, and enjoyed each other’s company.

By Monday my coughing and bronchitis was out of control. I had no business being out of bed. But that didn’t stop me from going out one last time to the beach. And that is where I found the cure for bronchitis. The waves were the biggest I have ever seen along the Outer Banks. The shoreline that was typically 100-200 feet away from the houses, was forcefully making its way up to the homes.

My friends and I would throw a football out into the water, and wait for the ocean to bring it back to us. We would pretend the oncoming waves were an opposing team about to tackle us. We’d run and dive for the ball, most of us getting “tackled” in the process. If we could grab the ball and throw it before getting taken under the water, we called it a touchdown. I think the ocean won that game. But we loved playing it anyway. Occasionally the refs (aka the Beach Patrol) would call a foul, and force us out of our “field.” But once they were gone again, we ran right back out into the water. The waves could be intense and scary, but the body surfing was fantastic. Suddenly I realized I wasn’t coughing anymore (unless I got forced a little too rapidly under the water). In fact, I found myself breathing better. The salty water was the best cure for bronchitis ever!

Finally we had to admit defeat, as the Beach Patrol was threatening to cite us, and the waves were getting too intense. We packed up and began our drive home. Hours later we found ourselves stuck in horrible traffic heading back to the big city. We listened to the radio for information and that was when we discovered the worst hurricane in U.S. history, Katrina, was hot on our heels.

We made it home safely, grateful to have avoided any serious danger or storms. We had had a wonderful weekend, but returned home with worry in our hearts for those suffering worse damages from the storms. I felt terrible for the people along the Gulf Coast who were getting so horribly battered. And yet I was grateful that my beloved Outer Banks had been spared a cruel fate.