An Abundance of Special Wild Places

This post was originally written October 10, 2011, was updated in March 2015 and December 2024.

No matter where I have lived, I have always had a special wild place or two where I could visit and find some peace and renewal. The Crystal Coast is an especially blessed area of south facing beaches that starts just east of Atlantic Beach and runs west along Bogue Banks to the Point at Emerald Isle. Along those beaches and just inland along the rivers and marshes from Beaufort to Swansboro there seems to a special place around every turn.

When we lived in Nova Scotia during the early seventies, there was a place high on the hill behind our two-hundred-year-old farm house. It was quite a hike, but the view of St. Croix Cove was worth it.

I bought 140 acres when I first moved there in 1973, but this particular spot was not part of it. I eventually traded some pasture land for this piece of wild land. The view and the acres surrounding it meant a lot more to me than a few acres of pasture.

We moved to New Brunswick in November 1974, and put together a large cattle herd there at Tay Ridge Farms. It was truly wild country. We did not even have fences at the back of the property. Even there I found a wild high ridge beyond our last cleared land. In the seventies and early eighties, it required a long hike. There was no road like there is today. What you could see was miles of unbroken wilderness.

It was a place that you could literally lose yourself to the embrace of wilderness. In fact two friends, Harvey and Charlie, both in their seventies were once helping me look for a stray bull from our herd. Both were born in Tay Creek and wandered the woods there all their lives. Harvey had spent his whole life working the farm which we had purchased in 1973. That cloudy day, far up the ridge, the three of us were lost for a few minutes.

It was an interesting experience standing in the middle of miles of wilderness and not knowing exactly which way was home. There was no real danger, just some time to imagine what if. Even with a bad guess, we would have run into a road in twenty or thirty miles, but fortunately we finally got our bearings.

Even after that episode, the ridge remained a special spot for me, and I have never stopped wandering the woods. I have had other special places like the magnificent trail that I maintained on the mountain behind our home in Roanoke, Virginia. Our wonderful Labrador retriever, Chester, and I created a lot of wonderful memories on that mountain.

Though scenic beauty is not an absolute necessity for a special place where you can lose yourself in the moment, it certainly doesn’t hurt. We were blessed on the Southern Outer Banks to have land and waters that can stretch your imagination and pull you into the moment.

In fact just driving across the bridge from Cape Carteret to Emerald is a good place to get a quick shot of inspiration. The view of Bogue Sound from the Cameron-Langston Bridge is often enough to get me through a tough day.

Closer to home, I can easily lose myself after a ten-minute paddle to the middle of the White Oak River. The scenery there can be beyond breath-taking. The White Oak River has more than one special spot as you can see from this photo album from 2013.

There are many other wild spots that work for others and not just me.