Off to the OBX Part 1

Off to the OBX    Part 1

By John W. Vander Velden

 

If you don’t know what OBX means take heart, we were there for nearly two days before we made the connection. The locals use those three letters to identify their area...The Outer Banks.

View from the parking lot

It had been eleven years since our last visit and there were things the same, like the weather and the ocean, and things different, like thousands of new rental properties. And I expected as much when we chose OBX as our first escape location for the year. Made the adventure a road trip. I would not recommend a straight through drive and we took our time, sorta’, spreading the drive over three days.  Three days? Well yeah, we made a stop and took half a day visiting the Ark Encounter, which in truth added a day to the trip. The Ark itself was impressive and we wandered about the exhibits which were well done. The work they went through to create the lifelike animals on display is amazing.

Four hours plus driving east took us to Charleston, West Virginia, which seemed to make the OBX reachable the next day. Driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains and across the Shenandoah Valley was beautiful, though the I-64 snakes tightly with several seep grades both up and down.

We spent more than a half hour moving less than a quarter mile while we were in Norfolk, Virginia. So close and yet surrounded by an ocean of near stationary cars carrying countless passengers all hoping to reach their own destinations, but wedged together on lanes meant to be traveled, but for that time virtually a parking lot.

The sun had long set when we checked in, but one of the reasons we had come was the Atlantic, and to the beach we went, dark or not.

Our Home at the OBX

The ocean was almost dead calm, maybe six inch swells. Yet there, in the dark with the sky reflecting off the water I felt it. There is something about the sea shore. Something that reaches deep within me, rumbles places that are unreachable by sights and sounds. Something primal. Something emotional. But most of all something spiritual.  A power I could never describe. Something real, but intangible. It made the long stressful drive worth the effort and more.

The sun comes up early in May, but its rising found me walking the nearly
deserted beach, bare feet on the cool sand and splashed by cold water of the rising tide. I beat the sun three mornings in a row watching the coloring sky for the moment the sun’s sphere escaped the water. I live for those brief times when the day begins so clearly, when I find myself where the horizon is distant and clear. That I had the beach very nearly for my own an added bonus. It is too seldom that I find myself where wind water and sky intersect in such a way, and even now look forward to the next opportunity.

(490 Words) 5-15-2019