Fisherman's song

I came with my dad and cousins, Mark and Chris, to the point at nearby Buxton today. It is the most easterly point of land along the Outer Banks, and the whole eastern seaboard until you get up into Maine and Nova Scotia.

We would drive out here when I was a kid, trying not to get stuck in the pea sand. Come to fish, sometimes mackerel or bluefish would be running and we would wind them in one by one. The waves are ferocious with many rip tides here, a dangerous place many have died who weren't careful. A good place to fish, a bad place to swim. A bad place to sail too! The whole banks, especially near here at Diamond Shoals, is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic for good reason. Thousands of wrecks, some quite ancient, litter these shorelines. Meeting their ends by ferocious storms or run aground on dangerous shoals.

There were many fishermen today, as always but not as many as we expected. The National Park Service has recently been lambasted by the recreational fishing community here for temporarily closing the beach access to the point and other areas for nesting of endangered seabirds like piping plovers. The problem is that they should have done this long ago instead of waiting until it got this bad. They set the wrong precedent and now all of the fishermen and a good many redneck good ol boys I might add, feel entitled to be able to come out here and do whatever they please. They don't realize that without respecting and treading softly on the wildlife and ecology here, there would be no fishing. There would be no undeveloped windswept beaches left. The seabirds would have nowhere to nest and would die...

Near the point some fishermen had caught a dogfish, a sand shark, for me to discover left dead on the beach. That made me sad. And a nearby pelican with broken wing beggared for handouts. I wish more of the people that came to enjoy this place respected it and gave back, instead of feeling entitled to just take away. I saw one bumper sticker sticker with a middle finger on it that said, "ID this bird Audubon." And even one that said, "MMM, piping plover. Tastes like chicken". Oooo, that makes me heated!

Picking along the flotsam and jetson of the surf line I found so many incredible things today though. Mermaids purses, beautiful shells, starfish, and long briny strings of kelp. I went running down the beach for miles while my dad and cousin's fished. The perfect cure for nearly any ailment. Nothing beats running along the beach on a sunny warm November day with surf tickling your legs and the sand massaging your feet. Alive and free as the wind. I even saw dolphins!