Love Letter to Ocracoke Island

Cedar Island was the end of the line. We parked the car. The onshore breeze drummed a halyard against an aluminum flagpole rising above the visitor center. Besides the cry of the circling gulls that hovered as if suspended from some invisible mobile, this irregular tolling was the only sound penetrating the muted afternoon air, lending the place a dormant, dreamlike atmosphere. Inside, a sign warned against rinsing sandy feet in the sink. We studied a map plotting 500 of the estimated 5,000 ships laid to rest since 1526 (when record-keeping began) amidst the shifting shoals of the Outer Banks, the chain of pencil-thin barrier islands sketched 200 miles from southeastern Virginia along the North Carolina coast.

Motorists reach Cedar Island by only one route, lonesome NC 12, which traverses the thousands of flood-prone acres of brackish marsh and wetland that isolate this old fishing village from mainland North Carolina. Passing over that liminal landscape between earth, sea, and sky—the haunt of black duck, oystercatcher, otter, cottonmouth, and snapping turtle—one experiences a rare sense of departure, as if the edge of the earth is near approaching. When we’d hummed comfortably into this Tolkienesque expanse, conversation naturally ceased. Our eyes tracked the flightpaths of errant pelicans, those prehistoric-looking water-birds, as they pumped their unwieldy wings bound for nearby rookeries or the nutrient-rich fishing waters of Pamlico Sound, where a late lunch of mullet or herring might await.

We were bound for Ocracoke, a spindly 16-mile Atlantic idyll two hours by ferry from the Cedar Island pier. I was guided and accompanied by my girlfriend Taylor, a Carolina girl with roots in the state going back well before the Revolution.

We’d met more than a year earlier on Bond Street in Manhattan. One of my favorite Italian restaurants was hosting an autumn pig roast. It being a Sunday, my friends were nursing headaches and shunning daylight, so I went alone. Plate in hand, I was scanning the cobblestone street for an open table when I noticed Taylor’s long figure standing in sunlight, clad in a selvedge denim dress and Ray Ban aviators. I assumed she must be waiting for a boyfriend. I hesitated, and when none appeared, marshaled the courage to approach. “May I join you?” I asked. She welcomed me.

The first thing I noticed was the extraordinary matrix of freckles that fanned out from the bridge of her nose onto her high cheekbones. The second was the subtle twang in her voice, and the way she spoke slowly and deliberately: an urbane country girl. She was beautiful and otherworldly, exotic to a Northeasterner like me. She’d been on Ocracoke just that morning with her family, hence those sun-wrought freckles. They’d visited the island annually since she was a little girl.

Our conversation continued across the street at the shop where she worked, Billy Reid, the Alabama-based fashion brand. I stood with my back to the window, she facing it. She removed her sunglasses, exposing her wild green eyes to the fall light that flooded the store. I was transfixed as she described the feral horses she’d seen grazing on the dunes at Shackleford Banks — a barrier island south of Ocracoke — their herd rumored to be descended from Iberian mustangs that swam ashore from sinking Spanish ships centuries ago. As a travel writer I’d explored the terraced ruins of Peru’s Sacred Valley, dwelt among hermetic monks on Mount Athos in northern Greece, and camped with Bedouins in the Wadi Rum desert of Jordan, but the idea of something so colorful in my own home country was intoxicating.

By the time we embarked for Ocracoke, we’d been together for just shy of one year, and were poised to move in to an old apartment on a leafy street in Brooklyn’s Park Slope. 15 dollars bought us and our rental car passage on the Cedar Island Ferry; another few dollars at Sharky’s Bar and Grill cold beers to enjoy on the journey. We sat on the upper deck watching pelicans plunge into the darkening sound, re-emerge, pause as if stunned, then flap back arduously into a sky rippled with clouds that progressed from white to grey to a chiaroscuro of fiery orange.

Soon the lights of Ocracoke Village flickered on the horizon. We rumbled into port in darkness, driving just three minutes to Crews Inn. Throughout the afternoon, Taylor had attempted unsuccessfully to make contact with our hosts to confirm our late arrival, but when we arrived, we found a hand-written note: “Welcome, Taylor! You’re in Ike and Sue’s Room.” We walked over creaky wooden floorboards to find the room open, and charming as can be, furnished with folksy paintings of the Outer Banks, including one vintage portrait of a heroic-looking young fisherman scanning the horizon, a heavy rope coiled over his shoulder.

Showered and scrubbed, we walked through the balmy night toward Gaffer’s, the only bar that seemed to be open at the relatively late hour of 10 pm. Golf-carts—the preferred mode of transportation on Ocracoke—passed by periodically, as well as the occasional scrum of families pedaling laid-back cruiser bikes. Inside Gaffer’s we found a karaoke session underway, the lyrics blurred by whatever the uniformed bartenders were pouring. A swaying woman belted “Love is a Battlefield” into the microphone. I ordered a tropical drink—something with pineapple juice—and a plate of fries. A series of hilarious, cringe-worthy performances ensued: Snoop Dogg, Queen, and one unbelievably saccharine country song I’d never heard but had the whole bar singing along: “You and me goin’ fishin’ in the dark, lyin’ on our backs and countin’ the stars…”

We were soon counting the stars ourselves. Outside Gaffer’s, by the glow of a neon sign, we overheard a burly man with a dense black forest of facial hair chatting with a friend: “I’m definitely keeping the beard for the Blackbeard re-enactment this year.” “Oh yeah,” his friend replied, “you’ve got to!” A few days later that same would-be pirate would mix us mean margaritas at the Flying Melon bar.

Blackbeard, born Edward Teach, is Ocracoke’s most famous historical visitor. Though he only operated in nearby waters for two years in the early 1700s, the colonial corsair’s legacy is very much alive on the island in the form of ubiquitous skull and crossbones memorabilia, themed tours and hotels, and an annual “Blackbeard’s Pirate Jamboree.” According to eyewitness accounts, the pirate would twist hemp into his beard before a raid, lighting the strands aflame so smoke shrouded his face. The effect resembled “a frightful Meteor” in the words of Captain Charles Johnson, the historically dubious eighteenth century chronicler of “the most notorious Pyrates.” These theatrics helped make Teach the most feared pirate of what is now referred to as the Golden Age of Piracy.

We walked to a long wooden dock jutting into the same waters Teach once navigated, dipping our toes into the black ripples and listening to the wind whistling against the phalanx of masts and furled sails in the harbor. The night air seemed to be the same temperature as our skin, evaporating any membrane between us and the enveloping darkness.

Morning found us curled together atop a feather bed in our air-conditioned room. Lilies politely danced in the sea breeze outside our window. Making plates of pancakes and fruit and filling cups with fresh coffee, we settled on the wrap-around screened-in porch. Morning at Crews Inn is a series of sweet, simple moments, the day pregnant with possibility. As we ate we were visited by Alton Ballance, the owner and innkeeper, and a descendant of Ocracoke’s first white settlers. When I shared I was a writer, Alton told us he’d started documenting the island’s tight-knit community and their stories as a student at UNC Chapel Hill in the 1970s, eventually recording the yarns and songs and customs of this seafaring people in his 1989 book, Ocracokers, which has become the classic study of the island’s culture, history, and lore.

At Ocracoke Island Yoga we wrung out the last vestiges of travel fatigue. It was a superb class. One attendee wore his trucker hat throughout, sweating through the brim as the sequences intensified. This was initially surprising, but having since watched countless episodes of Bravo’s Charleston-based reality show Southern Charm, I’ve come to understand that the trucker hat is to modern Southern men what the felt fedora was for men up until the 1960s: an indispensable and ubiquitous accessory. In fact, the first gift I received from Taylor’s family was one such hat: I wear it all the time back home, and have added a few more to my collection on later trips south of the Mason-Dixon line.

The final pose seamlessly sequenced to sitting outside the Ocracoke Coffee Company next to our parked bikes, sipping smoothies and espressos in wooden lawn-chairs. Despite having only been there some sixteen hours, we began plotting our strategy and logistics for moving to Ocracoke, a favorite travel game of ours. From our caffeinated, unscientific analysis of the island’s tourism industry, we identified one missing attraction: an outdoor cinema, like the ones I enjoyed as a kid in Greece. We imagined curating a calendar of family favorites (Zoolander, Parent Trap, Dumb and Dumber) mixed with cult classics (Big Lebowski, Mulholland Drive, Pulp Fiction), along with a tropical drinks menu and rotating popcorn flavors.

An onshore wind whipped golden grains of sand against our skin at Ocracoke Beach. Stout waves crashed at chaotic intervals, stirring up sea spray that mingling with heat mirages rising from the dunes, warping visibility down the coast in either direction. Overcoming the angry surf, we paddled out to calmer waters just beyond the break, floating in each other’s arms. Her freckles were drawn deeper into relief by the sun, and those otherworldly emerald eyes contained multitudes. We treaded water and found ourselves pulled away from the most populated stretch of beach by the relentless currents.

I faced the day’s most difficult decision at Eduardo’s taco truck. Cheesy crabmeat and jalapeño tacos, or a shrimp and mango ceviche tostada? I opted for the latter and an icy Corona. The playlist of Mexican music, all frenetic horns and drum-machines, elevated my pulse even before I crunched into the unexpectedly spicy treat. As we ate, a stream of hungry patrons arrived on every variation of bike, golf-cart, and pickup, departing with neatly-packed lunches to be shared on beaches and back porches elsewhere. A long electric trolley ferrying mostly older couples in pastel polo shirts slowed nearby. “They have really good food everywhere here,” the guide cheerfully explained into her microphone. “But I guess it really comes down to who you’re eating with!”

Ocracoke’s most unwanted dinner guest, Blackbeard, had spread a degree of terror far exceeding his brief two-year career when, in 1718, His Majesty King George I’s navy, under the command of one Lieutenant Robert Maynard, finally caught up with the elusive marauder off Ocracoke’s western shore. Addressing his pursuers as they closed in on his sloop The Adventure, the king of pirates reportedly took a swig of wine, snarling: “Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarters, or take any from you!” Raining deadly shot upon the HMS Ranger and Jane, The Adventure neutralized the former, and was poised for escape when a crack shot by one of Maynard’s marksmen severed The Adventure’s jib halyard, causing its sail to fall slack and the ship to halt. Lieutenant Maynard, aboard the Jane, ordered his men below deck to lay in wait, setting an ambush that the brash Blackbeard couldn’t resist. Believing its crew to have perished, the pirates boarded the Jane, only to be set upon by the phantom sailors. Damnation Blackbeard found when, after some six minutes of brutal close-quarters combat, the infamous pirate was dispatched by Maynard and his men. His body was tossed overboard, sinking beneath the surface of the shallow inlet. But as the victorious sailors steered the seized Adventure for their reward, a whiskered head swung from its bowsprit.

The same harsh sun that once baked over that gruesome trophy was softening and drifting toward the horizon when Taylor and I waded far out into the sun-drenched inlet today known as Teach’s Hole. No pirates, privateers, or anyone for that matter could be seen in any direction. The shore just beyond the beach was ringed by a mess of coastal red cedar and live oak, stunted in the salty soil and molded askew by centuries of sea winds.

Taylor waded back and walked along the cove, crouching here and there to inspect an exposed oyster bed, then climbed onto the outstretched limb of a nearly-horizontal oak with her book. We read until the daylight started to fade. Passing back through the forest toward the trailhead, the sound of snakes rippled through the underbrush, and the late-day breezes whistled in the branches, like the whispers of lonely mariners come ashore from lofty ships bobbing just off the coast, pikes drawn and silent prayers against ambush by pirate or Indian on the tips of their tongues. Back at Crews Inn, a great inhale-exhale of early evening sea winds swept high through the oak canopy over my head. I stood transfixed at this great drama from the outdoor shower just off the main house. “Break clear away, once in a while,” the naturalist John Muir once said, to “wash your spirit clean.” As my first full day on the island drew to a close, I felt as far from my desk in Brooklyn as if I’d been in India, closely connected with this relatively new love of mine, and falling deeper in love with my own American backyard.

Our days progressed more or less like this, in blissful simplicity, until loading back onto the ferry for Cedar Island and destinations beyond. The first day back in the office in New York I was acutely aware of how fixed the concrete felt beneath my chair, in sharp contrast to the swaying of shifting tides where we’d just been splashing. The concreteness of work decisions collided with fresh memories of a time when all we had to worry about was whether to order the flounder or the seafood gumbo at the Flying Melon restaurant. On Ocracoke everything seemed to dance with life, from the flightpaths of seabirds to the wind-whipped swirling of sand over the dunes. It made the structures and strictures of office life, of urban life, feel particularly tedious.

Reality had invaded our island dream, in the way reality does. But something far more invasive would soon fray the very real fabric of life on Ocracoke. Just two months after our visit, our little island paradise was hit by a big storm, absorbing the brunt of Hurricane Dorian’s wrath before it swept onward to the mainland. Though it passed overhead in a mere two hours, the seven-foot storm surge lingered for weeks, leaving Ocracoke, which sits only a few feet about sea-level, to face its worst flooding since 1944. In harrowing evacuations, islanders were airlifted from the roofs of their houses, while others were ferried to safety on boats that drove down submerged streets where we’d cycled carefree just weeks before. Crews Inn, where we’d stayed and slept and read on the old porch swing, was devastated, and as of writing will be closed until 2021. Besides the obvious impact on the tourism industry, and the physical damage Dorian did to Ocracoke’s innumerable historic houses and businesses, I couldn’t help but think of the island’s fishermen. In a familiar American tale, their centuries-old way of life was already under pressure from increased fuel costs, government inertia, and competition from cheaper imports. A lack of revenue from hungry tourists would only add to their troubles.

By spring of 2020 Ocracokers were still picking up the pieces, no doubt harried by the notion that even more severe storms and rising seas could arrive as soon as the fall hurricane season. And then, with businesses poised to reopen for summer, a deadly virus reached American shores, leading to travel restrictions on the Outer Banks. In the early weeks of the pandemic, police reported a surge of cases in which people were discovered hiding in the trunks of cars and on boats attempting to reach the relative refuge of those peaceful islands. Who could blame them? The restrictions were lifted in May, and Ocracoke is now creeping back, again, to a sense of normalcy, or whatever that means after a 100-year flood and the arrival of an unprecedented health crisis. In a sign of the times, the 2020 Blackbeard’s Pirate Jamboree is cancelled, giving re-enactors an extra year to cultivate their period-appropriate facial hair.

While Ocracoke rebuilt and the world reeled from intersecting crises, Taylor and I relocated from Brooklyn, New York to Richmond, Virginia, a place also in the midst of a dramatic confrontation between the physical landscape of history and forces of change, in this case hastened by the will of people, not storms. Like many, we’ve found ourselves turning inward, reassessing our approach to life, work, community, and love. The long quarantine has been a good test of our ability to weather the inevitable storms brought forth by the passage of time. Luckily we know that whatever comes our way, we’ll always have Ocracoke.