Postcard From the Outer Banks, North Carolina

There are three crabs on the bottom of the little swimming pool behind the beach cottage. They pace the floor, wall to wall. Today a Nor'easter blew down the banks and I went and stood on the beach. I watched a sea gull fly with all its might into the wind yet not move an inch. Sometimes I feel like that. The ocean was in white caps. I watched the sand blow down the beach, swirling like fog, just below knee level. It was almost ghostly. Footprints evaporated before my eyes.

We went to the top of the Currituck lighthouse and I was terrified of the wind. We were 160 feet off the ground, and I felt like the wind would like nothing more than to pluck me up and drop me into the sound. But it was beautiful. The trees are just beginning to turn here. And the red brick lighthouse stands out against the blue sky.

My favorite lighthouse was Cape Hatteras. It's painted in fanciful swirls of white and black, and is so tall. Where the Currituck's red stands out against the sky, this one leaps. They paint the lighthouses distinctively here so that they can guide people in daylight as well as at night.

I tried hang gliding on the sand dunes, just down the road from Kitty Hawk. You attach yourself to the center of the kite, pick up the kite, and start running as fast as you can down the dune, until your feet don't touch the ground any more. We were on the hang gliding bunny hill, so not very fearsome. I was a bit more concerned about climbing the lighthouse than the hang gliding.