I think they forgot

“When we look up and down the ocean fronts of America, we find that

everywhere they are passing behind the fences of private ownership. The

people can no longer get to the ocean. When we have reached the point

that a nation of 125 million people cannot set foot upon the thousands of

miles of beaches that border the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, except by

permission of those who monopolize the ocean front, then I say it is the

prerogative and the duty of the Federal and State Governments to step in

and acquire, not a swimming beach here and there, but solid blocks of

ocean front hundreds of miles in length. Call this ocean front a national

park, or a national seashore, or a state park or anything you please—I say

that the people have a right to a fair share of it.”

Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, 1938

I think they forgot their mission statement!!!

lighter footprint

I walk the beaches everyday that I am at the Outer Banks.  For me my favorite activity on the beach is not the normal lathering up with suntan lotion and laying out on the beach with a good book for hours tanning.   No, no, with my fair freckled skin all you would see on the beach after the initial blinding glare would be a sun baked lobster out on the sand. 

I love to hike for miles on the beach (lathered with 50 sunscreen) photographing and collecting shells and other unusual goodies that wash up on the beach.  Many of the wonderful gifts that washed up for me to look at with wonder I leave, I just document with my camera. 

I am always thrilled to find something unusual or different.  While I was walking along the water line I saw this wonderful little shell roll up with the tide and thought “Oh my, I have never found one like this”.   I took a quick image of it and picked it up and started to place it in my shell bag.   But before I placed it in there I could tell there was something different, it felt heavy.  I stopped and turned it over and to my surprise there was someone in there!!!   I turned around and placed it back where it was and walked on down the beach. 

I understand that as humans we sometimes leave a heavy footprint but I believe we all can live together with nature if we just be kind and strive to leave a lighter footprint.

Salvo dune field

winter

                                                       late summer and fall

I recall reading a post from a woman who spent a week in salvo for her vacation to the Outer Banks.  Usually when you read such postings you read positive comments of a wonderful experience but this one was different, this poster complained.  The very things she complained about are the fragile, delicate, intricateness that keep Salvo’s beaches wide and more importantly the dune field between the beach and the houses large and intact.  Thanks to the Wimble Shoals off the coast of Salvo is keeping her beaches unlike other areas of the Outer Banks that are losing their beaches at an alarming rate.                                                        spring                   

Her complains ranged from her Oceanfront house was not on (in the ocean), having to “walk” to the beach across this area that I call the dune field, then having to climb up and down a high dune to get to the beach, then having to walk across a wide beach to get to the ocean.  WOW, this is a blessing to have actually and not have your beach house teetering on the edge of the ocean!

                                                               
 
I  love the dune field almost as much as the beach.  The field changes with the time of day,  the seasons; the vast variety of plants and animals is incredible. Each plant has a purpose, an important goal, and that is to hold this barrier island together and feed the creatures that live on it.   If she just would have taken the time to enjoy what was there and why it was there, maybe she would not have minded the walk down the path through the dune field to the ocean.  But then again not everyone sees the world as I do.

                                                                           fall

Isn't it just so beautiful!