Sandbridge

We slipped out early and drove east.  There was no specific destination in mind; we only knew that if we went far enough, we would find a beach, and if we found a beach, we could play in the ocean and sand.

Sandbridge beach fronted the houses people use to escape the rest of their world; the houses they bother to name, located on streets with nautically themed titles and no defined edges because the sand creeps in on everything, encroaching on driveways, sidewalks, inside spaces, porches, and the scrubby little plots that might be lawns in any other area.  As soon as we arrived, we knew our time there would be limited.  Dark clouds stretched across the northern horizon, from the houses and hotels to some undetermined spot far out in the ocean.  If you watched long enough, you could see the flashes of lightning in their dark bellies.  I dropped my bag and ran for the water.

The slope is shallow, and by the time I was deep enough to get my shoulders under while standing, people on the beach were tiny specks.  I let myself drift back in with waves, and saw a large school of fish coming down the shore towards me.  Waist-deep, I could see the rougher texture they gave the surface of the water for dozens of yards in every direction.  The closest edge was only a few feet from me, and I stood still, waiting for the moment when I would be in the middle of a frenzied flurry of fins, but whenever they got close enough to recognize my presence, a great wave went through their bodies and the closest edge of the school surged away from me again, eyes wide at the surface of the water as they roiled over one another.  Above me, the edge of the clouds gave sharp delineation between the clear skies to the south and the storm approaching from the north.

Some people began slowly gathering their things, knowing the end of their day at the beach was imminent, but their pace belied how little they had to travel to shelter.  We had brought very little, and it only took us a moment to shoulder our bag, pick up our sandals, and start back towards the boardwalk that jutted into the sand like a taunting tongue.  I didn't even get to fly a kite, but perhaps that was for the best.  We had been granted a brief break in the weather for our little adventure before driving back through the storm to the hotel, and dinner.  Something with seafood.

photo credits for this post are The Girl's

More Great than Dismal

Near the eastern end of where Virginia meets North Carolina lies the Great Dismal Swamp.  At one time, escaped slaves hid here in small enclaves, using tools left behind hundreds of years earlier by Native Americans, or raiding nearby farms and settlements to survive.  Now most of it is a National Wildlife Refuge.  I found it because I happened to be in the area, with a day to kill, and looked at a map with the intent of finding somewhere I could hike, outside, unimpeded by pavement or traffic.  The entrance I chose may not have been the best for hiking trail selection, but it did offer me access to the pavilion with interesting information about how the swamp had harbored escaped slaves (I feel like there should be a bodies-of-water pun in that sentence, but I can't figure out what it is), and the only driving access to Drummond Lake.

The refuge is marked with a network of perfectly straight ditches of apparently stagnant water.  The roads run parallel to these, and it seems sometimes like one serves the other, but I'm not sure which is in either position.  Are the roads for the sake of the ditches, or are the ditches there for the sake of the roads?  As I drove in, I saw several herons sweeping low above the road, keeping just ahead of me.  Later, while walking along one of the ditches, I heard a steady stream of turtles plopping into the water from various logs and other perches.  In the drier sections of the preserve, cicada song rose and fell in the trees with a steady rhythm, like a wave in a stadium.  Along the ditches and obviously water-logged sections of the refuge, the songs came from frogs that were always somewhere I couldn't see.  Once, I heard something that must have been a deer rushing from my view, because nothing else in the area is that large, fast, and loud.

As I neared the lake, I saw something white in the middle of the narrow gravel road, and stopped to get a better look.  I never left my car, because I didn't want to scare it away, but I'm not sure I could have bothered this egret too much.  He knew it was his place, and I was just visiting, and saw no reason he should cede access of the road to me.  I waited patiently, taking far too many pictures of him as he strutted nearer and nearer to my car, until I finally decided to try creeping around him very slowly, and he finally flew off over the swamp.

Lake Drummond is one of only two natural lakes in the state of Virginia.  At roughly 9 miles in circumference, it's also the largest of the two, despite averaging 2-3 feet in depth.  The water looks black because it's filled with sediment.  It drains into the lake from the swamp and bubbles up from the ground.  A few times, I thought I saw something flop at the surface of the water, but by the time I was close enough to the splash to see what caused it, the splasher had dropped below the surface and was effectively invisible again.

I've spent a lot of time lately isolated in the city, surrounded by pavement and high buildings.  It felt good to spend a day in the swamp, in sweltering heat, even if the trails were arrow-straight and bordered, or were perhaps bordered by, ditches of black water.  The trails I found weren't that interesting, but the environment was.  It was definitely more great than dismal.