"Doesn't it seem to you," asked
Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that
boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to
thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?”
Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856)
Mike
and I spent the week before Thanksgiving with friends in the Southern Outer
Banks of North Carolina. The resort town of Emerald Isle is on a 30-mile-long
pencil of low-lying land attached to the mainland only by a bridge at either
end. The island has a sound on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, and
the towns along the island are known as the Crystal Coast. There are no
high-rises along the beach, just unbroken rows of vacation houses just feet
from the dunes, almost all of them empty in November – except ours.
So
we woke up in the mornings and fell asleep at night to the sounds of the sea
through the open windows. Like many people, I’ve never been good at stilling my
mind, but somehow it becomes much easier to do when sitting on a strand of wet sand
just watching the waves. There can be no more soothing sensation in the world. Every
muscle in my body relaxes from its habitual semi-clench. I’m sure it’s partly
because wave sounds are what all humans remember from being inside our mothers’
bellies. But in my case, it’s also because the North Sea provided the everlasting
soundtrack of my childhood so, wherever I am in the world – the Carolinas, the
English Channel, Tahiti - the sea is always home.
Our
first two days in Emerald Isle were so hot it was impossible to sit for long in
the direct sun. We wore shorts and tee-shirts, and I even waded in the Atlantic.
But then the weather turned grey and cold. Mike and I tried to play tennis on
the town’s courts and had to battle the icy wind that whipped the ball around. Then
on the last full day of our week, the wind died down and the sky cleared, and we
walked on the beach in sweaters and jackets, feeling the warmth of the sun on our
faces. From blazing sun to cloud-curdled skies to chilly brilliance all in the
space of a week.
I
spent the days reading and writing, gazing out at the shrimp boats with their
masts akimbo, balanced on the horizon like bathtub toys. Lines of pelicans –
still an exotic wonder to my European eyes – flew low over the water in perfect
formation. And several times a day we would spot a pod of dolphins cresting through
the silver shimmer on the grey Atlantic water.
On
my beach walks, I was fascinated by how the tiny sanderlings would skitter
across the wet sand with the ebb and flow of waves, always just ahead of the foam. And on several
days I saw huge congregations of sea birds holding a vigil on the flat wet
sand, all tightly packed and facing the same way – herring gulls, black-backed gulls, willets, terns, and every
kind of sandpiper. They seemed impervious to the proximity of a human, but at the
approach of a dog, however docile, they would rise en masse only to settle down
again a few yards further down the beach. Once Mike and I came across a dead
cormorant on its back in the wet sand, as black as an oil slick and perfect
except for a slight pink perforation on its breast.
Now
we’re back in wintry Washington, with the rush and hustle of the holiday season
upon us, and I’m already losing that unclenched tranquil feeling I had as I sat
at the water’s edge. The sea is no longer just outside my window, but I know I must
learn to listen to the inner ocean that is always there in my memory and imagination.