Drawn In

The surf was pretty phenomenal yesterday.

If your car is covered with salt, the weather has been unseasonably cool, traffic has been unseasonably heavy, and then all the sudden it's ten degrees warmer and all of the tourists are at the beach, you can bet the surf is pumping. At the moment the wind switches to come out of the southwest, the surf spends about an hour getting organized and then it is a race against time. The swell is falling. As the gentle west wind grooms the face of each wave, it begins to equalize the force of the wind driven sea. If it's blown over twenty five miles per hour onshore for more than three days, it should be head high. At low tide, it will be fun, and in most places serious enough.

If you are on vacation and it has been blowing northeast over twenty miles per hour for more than three days, you may be contemplating going home. At least you can cut the grass before you go back to work. You've over payed for several movies, and some t-shirts that you don't need. You haven't been on the beach, because to do so is to risk death by micro-derm abrasion. And then, the clouds part, the wind shifts and the angry sea (and roadways) give way to the pristine beaches you had been hoping for all along. There's just one thing...the waves still look pretty big, even though they look far less threatening in organized lines.

When the wind shifts, surfers will be standing on dune crossovers gazing to the east, as I was yesterday when I saw a familiar sight: lifeguards speeding down the beach on four wheelers. They stopped about two hundred yards north of our beach access, and I commented to some strangers checking the surf that it looked like a rescue. There was someone stumbling out of the water with the kind of surfboard that indicated that he didn't know what he was doing. We figured that was it, but then, there in the impact zone was a head bobbing. The lifeguard was in the water in seconds, and thanks to the rip current that had caught the victim, was within feet of the individual in distress in less than one minute. As the guard offered the float to the swimmer, who's head was still above water, I commented to the strangers that it looked like the show was over.

I surfed literally until I was exhausted. I caught great waves. I watched friends catch great waves--hollow tubes that fully cover a crouching man. I made it out of some, and was crushed by others. The surf was serious enough to demand complete attention but it was familiar. The waves aren't that good that often, so I'd say it was like being with a great friend that you don't see all that much of. I should have gone back to work when the lunch hour ended. But I knew conditions were fleeting. I stayed until I couldn't.

Yesterday afternoon I was in the town office (completely exhausted) picking up a building permit. I overheard a comment about an ocean rescue that was unsuccessful. I asked if it was the one I'd seen and my fears were confirmed. I didn't see that one going that way. I once asked a friend of mine who is an ER nurse if her experience made her see life as extremely fragile or extremely durable. She said working in the ER just made life more mysterious because she would lose people who seemed to have relatively minor injuries and see people with horrific trauma pull through.

Our quaint little town hides a secret. We are on the margin--on the edge of human habitat. Through practice, familiarity, and probably some hubris, some learn to enjoy the ocean. We may survive there, we may revel, but we cannot thrive. Walking the beach, seeing the ocean turn from angry to inviting and back again reminds us of our fortune and our frailty. The sea, is another world, and the beach is the border. But there is a lot of nothing on that horizon. Sometimes in that nothing, we see what we need to. That is why we are drawn in. And sometimes any one of us can be drawn in too far.

The Circus

You've got to get out occasionally, or so I'm told... We took the wee one to the circus in Elizabeth City, our nearby metropolis. Elizabeth Town would be more accurate, but that was taken, and Elizabeth Large Town would be even more accurate, but is cumbersome. In addition to several auto dealerships, E City as it is affectionately know by outer bankers, sports a vintage (mildly decaying) National Guard Armory. This sleepy--gymnasium really--played host to the greatest show on earth last week. Now, it is possible that the Circus Pages Circus is not the greatest circus ever to be performed, but I am pretty comfortable arguing that pound for pound, it's pretty bad ass! Now, let's put aside our concerns for the strange lives of the circus performers and staff (mostly one and the same on this scale), and lets let the 300 LB animal welfare gorilla doze in the corner of the room, and let's--just for a moment--marvel. To not be impressed by this show you would have to be dead, or higher than a giraffe's buns. Let's do stats first. The Armory's open room had to be around 10,000-15,000 square feet (guessing). There are vacation homes with more space than that (big ones, granted). There were probably less than twelve professional performers, though they wore many hats, and about as many prop guys and poop--no excrement managers. There were: three lions, two elephants, ten or so ponies, a horse, two tigers, a globe of death with four, yes four motorcycles!, a trampoline act, an ariel acrobatics act, and something that was a cross between a bullfight and a wardrobe extravaganza (you gotta see that one to believe it). Perhaps most impressively, the lion tamer, the ticket girl, the face painter, the acrobat, the bikini clad lady in the globe of death, camel wrangler, and sometimes announcer were the same person! She wasn't the only one. One of the acrobats sold popcorn, funnel cakes, did crazy business on a trampoline, and then rode a motorcycle (upside down at least thirty percent of the time) in the globe of death. Oh yeah, and there were four trained camels. From what I understand they are ornery cusses so, there's that. The versatility, the ease of transition, and the complete lack of pretense (my kid was high as a kite on cotton candy and all over the place, no on once asked her to sit down or back away from the rail) were pretty stunning, but what was more compelling to me was the scale. I live a tiny life in a tiny town, and truth be told, I love our tiny E City. And here it was, a tiny circus in size only. Literally every trailer hauling all of this talent and animal grandeur was parallel parked in less than one city block. Elephants!! You get that? Elephants plural! Tiny footprint, huge show. I know I sound like a bit of a company mouthpiece here, but I payed full price (and then some) I assure you. It was truly like stepping back in time. We drove forty minutes and fifty years into the past. My daughter and I took an elephant ride. She rode a pony as well. We never once saw a release form! The whole show fit snuggly inside the Armory's walls, but it completely blew our minds. I hope the magic comes to a mini city near you. You can invite them if you would like.... http://www.circuspages.com