A Safe Warm Spot for a Challenging Fall

Ed, a good friend of mine who died a few years ago, used to say that if you were willing to look a little, most of the time you could find a place on the water in Carteret County where the wind wasn’t blowing. Ed grew up here and knew the area’s waters better than anyone I have ever known.

We have spent fourteen years here along Raymond’s Gut just off the White Oak River north of Swansboro. I managed to learn enough about the White Oak River from my kayaking and boating to know Ed was right. Many times, I fished a cove just off the river when the main River had whitecaps on it. Then there were times you could be in the middle of the river with hardly a ripple. Sometimes it is blowing on the river but quiet on the backside of Bear Island.

It turns out Ed’s wisdom also applies to our house. If you look a little, you can almost always find a cozy spot out of the wind. It is one of the reasons we love our home. The side of our house with the most windows faces the South. That and the protection provided by pines just across the water from us makes our home a delightful place as the air turns cooler in the fall. It also creates a great microclimate for gardening. Living on Raymond’s Gut just off the White Oak River turned out to be a lucky decision for us.

On October 18, 2020, we awoke to a temperature of forty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. That is a very cool fall morning here on the coast. I actually wore a long-sleeved tee shirt when I went to retrieve the Sunday paper. It is only the second or third time that I have done that since early spring. However, I will have to change out the shirt by noon. I still have not given up my shorts and Crocs which often remain my uniform until well into November and sometimes even December.

When I headed up to my office, I stopped by our little porch which is off of our great room. I wanted to snap a picture of the view which turns out to be the picture that I chose for the post. As I walked onto the porch, I embraced by the warmth of the sun. The temperature on the porch was likely twenty-five degrees warmer than it was on the ground level out in the breeze. I was very tempted just to sit down and soak up the warmth and enjoy the wild world that is so much a part of our home. The number of Great Egret and Great Blue Heron pictures that I have taken from the little porch would stun most people.  I took this Great Egret picture and this Great Blue Heron picture the previous Friday just before I walked inside and took this shot of a Kingfisher.

Soaking up warmth is not something we do a lot of here in the summer when the heat has found us. Fortunately, Carteret County has a lot of water and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. With all that water, it takes longer for summer’s heat to reach us than it does many of North Carolina’s interior counties. In early summer it is not uncommon to find areas twenty miles inland recording temperatures ten to twenty degrees warmer than us.

We do go through ten to twelve weeks of really warm weather, but most people just use that as an excuse to either jump in the surf or be out on the water in a boat or kayak. We are lucky to have a house where there is almost always a continuous breeze in the summer. When fall comes all the warm water tempers the incoming rush of cool air. Many years we have even picked tomatoes in December and once we even harvested them in January. All that warm water makes a huge difference in the cold months.

With the Covid crisis that we all face, I feel extremely blessed to live in an area where there is room to safely walk and enjoy the natural surroundings that have so enriched our lives over the years.

While we might not have gotten our green beans planted early enough this year, we still have the hope of some November or December tomatoes. While the headlines in the newspapers cause a lot of stress, where I live and the house I live in generally help to counter that stress by letting me soak up some warmth or some of nature’s beauty.

Two of the linked drone pictures, the little porch and the wild area behind the house, were taken by Justin Whitt of Light House Visuals as he was taking pictures for the list of our home. I highly recommend Justin but you can judge for yourself by looking at the pictures he took for our waterfront home listing.

My Crystal Coast newsletter comes out by email a few times a year. Sign up at this link. To read more articles that I have written visit my porfolio at Muckrack.

This is the link to my Newsletter update after Hurricane Isaias passed through the area.

Click to go back to the Crystal Coast Life blog or back to the Crystal Coast Life homepage