It was a warm, salty, sunny day in the June of 1984, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

I lived then, and live now in Lexington, Kentucky, the largest US city with no major water element…or so I’ve been told. We have no ocean, no lake, no river. We do have the Town Branch of the Elkhorn Creek that runs through our downtown, or at least it formerly did. We (“we” being folks before my time) paved over the creek. Thus, it now runs under our downtown.

I’ve never seen it.

But I suspect many of us Lexingtonians, like divining rods, know it’s there, and I think we harbor a longing for it. A few years ago, an enterprising local artist ran an audio cable through a sidewalk that lies between a 20-story downtown bank building and its parking structure to a microphone near the underground waterway. Hidden speakers whispered the sounds of running water to the strollers on their way to make their mortgage payments. Not exactly ocean surf…more like trickles of desperation.

I love where I live, but I do long for big water…and a major league baseball team. It’s all that stands between Lexington and perfection in my book.

The first time I saw an ocean I was on a winery/vineyard business trip to California. One late afternoon, my colleagues and I drove our rental gondola of a car due west until our path ended on two tire tracks on the grass. We walked to the cliff overlooking the biggest water I’d ever seen.

A couple of days earlier, I had made my first hajj to City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco and now I was standing at the physical and logical end of Kerouac’s road. I was at the end of the western world, basking in that western light, gazing across to where nothing was visible, nothing was promised, nothing was assured, and nothing was finished. The possibilities of Diebenkorn’s and Seurat’s blank canvases were immediate and possible. What was on the other side? Stoppard advises; “I wouldn’t think about it if I were you, you’d only get depressed.” Tolkien is more hopeful, but just as final, and since I did not want to visit those Grey Havens while still in my 20’s, I reluctantly pulled myself away…changed more than a bit, to a more pedestrian search for Dr. David Bruce’s winery and some colossal chardonnays.

I have been mesmerized by big water ever since. Key West, Clearwater, Biloxi, New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston, and the Outer Banks. Waves and tides, sunsets and sunrises, lakes, bays, rivers, marshes, herons, dolphins, pelicans…

Pelicans…

…ah yes-s-s-s, pelicans…

…back to 1984.

It had already been a long, full day and we still had a ways to go…but that was alright. By this time, I was pretty warm and salty myself, and still fairly sunny.

The Outer Banks are big water writ even bigger water. These fragile strips of sand are far enough out to sea that to the east you can’t see Africa though you’re told it’s there, and to the west you can’t see the mainland though you’re told…

Sunrise over the water inspiring your day.

Sunset over the water evaluating your day.

Promising to do better tomorrow…or perhaps, do nothing at all.

This day, the Queasy Rider and I had been covering ground all day.

We had left the third member of our expedition, P-Tom, back at the beach house, nursing his badly sunburned feet. P-Tom had camped out the previous afternoon on the deck of his uncle’s beach house, in the shade, with 800+ pages of light reading about Confederate naval fortifications. As sure as Martello walls must crumble before the onslaught of the modern cannonballs of 1861, it was just as inevitable that P-Tom’s page-turner was no match for the insidious onslaught of the warm ocean sun.

He fell asleep.

The shade moved, as fickle shade will.

His beach-appropriate bare feet were exposed.

He snored.

His feet simmered.

We’ll turn that inevitable page for him.

Queaser and I were sympathetic, but still ambulatory. Heartless and undeterred, we beat our un-fried feet down the road to adventure.

We checked out the site of the Chicamacomico Races. This is just fun to say out loud, and it was where the Blues and the Grays in the jolly 1860’s spent a jolly day chasing each other up and down a sandy stretch of beach that meant little to either side, to no discernible improvement to the strategic chances of either side. I forget who chased who first, but both factions got their turn to chase. It was like a re-enaction of something that had not yet been enacted. I dunno. It plumb evaded me. Maybe there was yelling and whooping and beer involved. Maybe it ended in a real nice clambake.

We moved on to see the lighthouse at Hatteras. This is the lighthouse that had been moved back from the encroaching sea. It was an impressive feat, but not speedy, and we had a ferry to catch. We were on our way to Ocracoke Island.

Ocracoke was pleasant and small—humps of sand, clumps of sea oats, and a squat lighthouse that was moving nowhere.  We had pretty well “done” the isle in about 20 minutes, but we had time to kill before the return ferry. We treated ourselves to a dark little restaurant and some dubious-looking, but tasty chowder.

Now we were returning on the ferry along the fringe of the Pamlico Sound to Hatteras. We were leaning on the rail looking toward the mainland we were assured by the maps was out there somewhere.

A line of ten or twelve pelicans flew sinuously past on a course parallel to our craft…above the horizon…then below the horizon…above again…then below again……repeatedly……………..sewing the sea to the sky.

I admire pelicans.

They look so ungainly on land and so commandingly graceful when they fly.

Sewing the sea to the sky, a beautiful unconscious act of nature, oblivious to and unconcerned with the fact that their stitches will never hold.

I have many friends who are stage actors and directors. They are pelicans. They create people and situations that stun and move real people. They sew the sea to the sky for the run of a show. Their stitches never hold. The show closes and the moment disappears except in the minds and hearts of those they stunned and moved…and later of course in their stories shared and expanded with other pelicans over omelets at Josie’s breakfast oasis.

These thespian pelicans are oblivious and unconcerned. They have new lines to learn. They have new, un-permanent stitches to sew.

They have new sowing to do, and new lies to tell.

I admire pelicans.