Another week camping at Ocracoke!

Rather than try to describe the shape of the whole thing, here is the last day.

I spend the first hour of daylight in the tent, enjoying the rain and reading Spider Robinson's User Friendly -- a light little puff pastry of a book. The first thing I see when I get out is a rainbow, out over the dunes.

The weather quickly turns pleasant, and we spend most of it on the beach. I'm starting to get tanned after a week here, and don't have to avoid the sun as much today. The waves are gentle.

I catch up on the first hundred pages of Le Guin's Powers, which according to the Google visitor's pass sticker on the back cover, I had started to read last December and didn't finish, since it was too good. It's my second book this trip about slavery, though not so wrenching as Octavia Butler's Kindred.

After lunch, the wind picks up, and I send the kite out on 500 feet of line, attached to a wooden tent stake that's driven in the sand. A airplane passes by, just out to sea, and lower than the kite, followed by a helicopter.

Later I walk downwind along the beach for a good long time, trailing the kite, and trying to walk with my eyes closed. I've been playing at this around the campground, for up to 30 steps, but on the deserted beach I only have to worry about stepping barefoot on a sharp shell or other flotsum. I work up to 100 paces blind, then 200, and finally, on my way back, manage 400 paces, or about 1/5th of a mile. The kite keeps pulling me inland, and I have to use the sound of the surf to guide me back to the wet sand. It becomes peaceful and meditative, and I'm disappointed when I get back to the busy beach.

It starts to look like rain, so I wind in the kite. Just as I get out of the shower the storm starts. It rains and thunders all through supper, with us wedged in the barely dry center of the screen tent. There's a loud crash from the highway, followed by sirens. The ground begins to swim with water. Well after we all wish it were over, it stops, and the sun is suprisingly still up.

There's another rainbow, this one a full arch. And then the light taken on a wonderful quality and the post-rain campground seems an entirely other place than the sun-drenched desert of the past week. Unknown birds slowly soar down the dunes catching insects and calling, and I spend an hour or two watching clouds, spotting the fingernail new moon, enjoying another beautiful sunset, and finishing the book. On the way to bed I see one last flash of lightning.

Ocracode for this trip:

OBX1.1 P2/7/3 L6 SA24bsb---c---/A4db++c+++ U3(Sango+Kai) T1f0b0 R1T Bn+b-m+++ F++u- SC-s+++g1 H++f0i4 V++++s++m0 E+++r+++