TOPSAIL ISLAND, N.C.--A long flight of pelicans in unwavering single file passes right above the beachfront condo, making an early morning reconnaissance in force northward toward the Marine base at Camp Lejeune. Soon the line snakes slightly in the distance, following the water's edge. In the evening you'll see them heading back south, the day's sorties done.
The pelicans are nature's P-38 Lightning, which may be as close as engineering has ever come to poetry. Pelicans don't so much fly as soar, needing only an occasional slow flap of their long wingspans to float on the air, unlike the seagull--an earlier, less efficient model with a more active motor. A strange bird is the pelican, to quote a line attributed to that great ornithologist Ogden Nash, his beak can hold more than his belican.
Now and then you'll see a lone pelican out scouting, or over the waves, looking for lunch. A pelican's life must be like a perpetual trip to the seafood buffet, peering down for the catch of the day. In an instant the P-38 becomes a dive bomber. Its graceful trajectory is suddenly transformed into one straight plummet--the shortest, fastest distance between two points. Splash!
This morning the pelicans have no competition from the 'copters at Lejeune. For now the avians have resumed their monopoly over this little barrier island, 22 miles long and maybe a mile wide between the Sound and the ocean.
The island continues to make a brave stand against Disneyfication, complete with all its franchises, strip malls and high-rises. But it's a losing fight, however noble the cause. Modernity keeps prowling around the edges, looking for an opening, and sometimes springing up right in the middle of the island.
Each year more Floridian showplaces crop up between the modest cottages. Back from the beach, hidden in the palmettos, whole developments sprout; tall houses straight out of the architectural design books shoot up like the sawgrass. The northern half of the island is already overrun with apartment buildings; I try to stick to the simpler Southern half. Which figures, drawn as I am to Lost Causes.
They keep coming--the faceless, rootless people. The best the island will be able to do is slow their advance, and hope to somehow turn them into islanders.
Real estate now threatens to replace fishing as the island's principal attraction and preoccupation. Down the road is an old-style hamburger-and-hot-dog, fishing-supply, and notions store. Between noting that "the blues are thick and the Spanish are starting to bite," the guy who runs it asks one of his customers how many new houses have gone up this week. The emptiness that makes Topsail so attractive is being filled in.
The fishing is supposed to be good today, but the shelling is poor to nil, and the sharks' teeth rare as hens'. Up the beach, the tide has washed up a gravel bed full of shells, worthless yet priceless. Along with a few smooth stones worn away by the sea and time, both of which keep on flowing no matter what. You pick them over, and hold a few up to the sun to admire the pale colors and intricate designs. You can't help but slip a few into your pocket, picking and choosing, till you walk with a slight jingle, as though you were freighted with the wealth of the Indies. My favorites have become the fragments of big clam shells just the right size to accommodate your thumb, their purple and pink and white layers as smooth and soothing as their feel. They're better than worry beads.
Washing the grit off the shells in the stainless steel kitchen sink back at the condo, seeing the patterns emerge, modern and abstract yet old as the sea, you feel rich as Midas. The shells may all be similar, yet each is unique as a thumbprint. They're all the work of the same Artist, who throws them off his potter's wheel by the millions.
Nothing is ever exactly the same on the beach, not the shells, not even the ever-rolling waves as they join and splash, just as they have done since Time began. And certainly not me as I shuffle along the little boardwalk that leads from our apartment down to the sea--like one more old wreck floating along with the tide. Me and the Hesperus.
Each wave, each stone, each shell, each wondrously made person is different. How do you suppose He managed to do that? Some physicist can doubtless explain it, but will he appreciate it? Can he give us a formula for awe? Can he bound the boundless?
Down the beach, somebody's left the gate open, as they say in Texas. A crowd of folks has arrived. Kids are digging in the sand, families setting up beach umbrellas, a fisherman reels in a slippery silvery pompano . . . . What are they all doing on my beach? They must be day-trippers, and once the weekend's gone, with any luck they'll be gone with it, and leave me to scan the lone level sands undisturbed.
It's impressive how suddenly the territorial imperative asserts itself. In an instant man goes from awe at the Creation to grabbing a piece of it for himself. The good and evil inclinations in him struggle for supremacy at every moment, and man must choose between them. With each choice he creates a different world and, more worrisome, a different self. What would you be if you'd made different choices in life?
How long Topsail will remain a refuge for the mind is a guess, but while the island and we are here, there are moments, as the light is dying at the end of the day or being born again at dawn, or in the darkness when the only illumination comes from the moonlight glinting off the whitecaps, when the beach seems as boundless as the mind itself.
Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at:
pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com
Editorial on 10/11/2015