Thank Goodness for the Green
Jul/05/09 09:31 PM
As you move down the coast, Nova Scotia has mostly rocky beaches like Maine. New Jersey has sandy beaches with a backdrop of pine barrens. Along the eastern shore of Virginia, farmland runs to the beach in places.
Along North Carolina's northern Outer Banks, the thin strand of sand is often barely held in place by vegetation. Then midway down the southern Outer Banks, out of the water springs this green strand of sand anchored by vegetation that looks to be impenetrable.
Of course it is Emerald Isle.
Often as we are driving down the beach from Atlantic Beach through Pine Knoll Shores and on to the town of Emerald Isle, I like to imagine the beach before it became developed. My wife will often convince me to drive to Fort Macon State Park just to look at the dense vegetation that anchors the sand and which probably looks very much like it did before development came to the island.
While I may have come to the beach for the blue water and blue skies, I think it is the strong green vegetation that makes me feel at home here on the Crystal Coast. I have seen how the ocean can cut through whatever it wants. I was over on Hatteras Island just after a storm created a new inlet. I have seen the sands shift down on the Point at Emerald Isle, yet somehow all the tough, lush, green vegetation makes me believe that Emerald Isle is as well anchored as a sandy beach can be.
I am always amazed at how many homes are tucked into the dense vegetation along our beaches. There are places where the vegetation is mostly gone, but considering the amount of development along the shore, there is an amazing of amount of dense vegetation still here.
You can wander parts of Emerald Isle and easily think you are in a maritime forest. When you combine the beach vegetation with the pine forests of Croatan National Forest's 158,000 acres, you end up in a green oasis that thankfully we still have a chance to protect and preserve.
One of the things that attracted us to Carteret County was the low density of development. There is plenty of green space to go along with the blue waters of the county. To someone who lives in a metro area like Washington, DC, we look positively rural. The first time my Northern Virginia son came to visit, I gave him directions which brought him the most direct way. That meant two lane roads and plenty of corn fields.
When he headed back to his traffic jams, he asked for a route which had four lanes all the way and which also avoided corn fields. Living in a city, he felt somewhat threatened by the sea of green which happens to be most of Carteret County.
We have no huge cities, but that is the beauty of living in this area. We have small towns and almost all of the modern conveniences. I was talking to a friend in Canada who was visiting the area where we used to live along Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy. He complained that the only computer connection was still a 2400 Baud modem.
Carteret County does not have that problem. Our sea of green and blue also manages to be nicely tied into the modern world. We just end up sharing our paradise with visitors for a couple of months out of the year.
Much of the time the green vegetation of our beach strand swallows up our visitors. Tonight we drove from Fort Macon down to the Cameron Langston Bridge which crosses from Emerald Isle to Cape Carteret and Cedar Point. You could hardly tell the island was packed with visiting families unless you glanced at the Food Lion parking lot at Emerald Plantation.
Yesterday the streets were packed, today the green forests, sandy beaches, and blue waters have swallowed up our guests. It is almost as if the greenness of the island invites people to stay out of sight.
It is a great pleasure to live in a place that can accommodate so many visitors without seeming overcrowded. While I know the restaurants and grocery stores may well show signs of lots of people, it still feels like that we live in a place which has a very good balance between homes for people and an environment that is protected from over development.
I am glad there is a Myrtle Beach in the world, but I am even more pleased that it is three hours south of here and that I do not have to drive through it.
Our world of greens and blues is a pretty amazing spot. One of my favorite places to reinforce that thought is the Emerald Woods Trail. In just a short space you go from dense forest to the wide open Bogue Sound.
It is a good hike to take. It always convinces me that we made the right decision when we moved to the green world of the Crystal Coast.