That’s an oxymoron—isn’t it? Expect the unexpected: I used to joke that this had become my motto, at the end of a year living in Sicily… as though I had finally gotten accustomed to handling the numerous unforeseen challenges (and delights, I should add!) that one might encounter on any given day there. I had finally gotten on the right frequency, I thought, as a foreigner. Now that I’ve typed those words—expect the unexpected— and I’m looking at them, I’m second-guessing myself, and my own perception (something I’m really good at doing, alas). It’s actually, literally impossible to expect the unexpected. Or is it possible, in the sense that what it really means is that we can know only that things beyond our control are going to happen to us and will keep happening…and “expecting” this is to at least have some measure of acceptance over it, if not actual control. It doesn’t mean constantly anticipating catastrophe—at least, not to me!—but rather being ready for what comes, as much as one possibly can be, without over-thinking.
Anyway—here’s an unexpected development in my life: I found myself driving through Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge yesterday—my first time back here in a while.
The view from my car window, above, and below, the drive in:
I saw a wolf yesterday, too—not in the Refuge, but at the Red Wolf Education Center nearby, at Pocosin Lakes, where I was fortunate to be given a glimpse of the breeding pair of “ambassador wolves” currently housed there.
Here’s a zoomed-in snap of male 2445M, born in 2022 at the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka, MO (I’ve been there, an amazing place!), looking rather unhappy to find us watching him, brief as the glimpse was. I’m no photographer, but what a beautiful animal:
It’s mating season—and for the first time at this location, a male and female have been brought together in hopes they might produce a litter this spring. He doesn’t seem keen about having an audience, and I don’t blame him.
Not to get weird, but you can try to catch them mating on this webcam if you’re interested. Hey, they’re critically endangered! It’s for science.
I am out here in eastern NC not to see the wolves, but for sad reasons—another death in the family. My aunt, my sweet godmother, my recently-deceased father’s older sister, passed away Wednesday after going into hospice just this week. I was planning to drive out anyway to see her, to help my cousin, her only child, as I was able, but she died before I got here. I’m glad that at least she knew I was coming.
I’m tired, so not able to write much at the moment, but I wanted to share some glimpses…
I went for a walk this morning in the Audubon sanctuary in Corolla, where I am able to stay, thanks to the kindness of caretaker friends (my cousin invited me to stay with her, just to clarify, but I didn’t want to impose…).
Pine-y and sandy and beautiful, so many birds.
There is a dog on the property so I wasn’t sure if these prints (below) were coyote or not—I didn’t see any human prints beside them… What are they, do you know?
At lunch with my cousin I heard stories about my dad that her mom had shared right after he died, that had somehow not made their way to me. How when he was a little boy he loved Christmas and was first to ask their mother about putting the lights up, how he’d had a small blue parakeet he loved that he taught to do tricks and pull a little wagon. Stories in her mother’s words, read to me from her phone, about my father, both of them gone now… well it was a beautiful, tearful lunch at a mostly-empty Thai sushi restaurant in Kittyhawk.
Later, this evening, I went for a walk on the beach. It was utterly empty. I like North Carolina beaches best in the off season.
I found some treasures… was just thinking about how rare it is to find beach glass anymore, in part due to all the plastic we use instead of glass, and how I used to find more when I was a kid growing up on the coast of Massachusetts, and then I saw this glowing on the ground. From a bottle of Bombay Sapphire, maybe? I’ll take it—smoothed and clouded by its time in the waves.
Neat conch. I think it’s a conch?
I also saw signs of death… of once-living things, moving on to the next phase of the cycle…
I really hoped to see a dolphin, as sometimes happens when I’m on the coast, I may or may not have been hoping for a sign, but I didn’t see one this time.
After the sun set, I turned back to find the stairs I’d come down over the dunes, and realized I had no idea where they were; I hadn’t been paying any attention at the time. Now I gazed at an endless stretch of identical-looking, evenly-spaced wooden staircases. Finally I climbed up one that I thought might be it, to at least get a vantage point, and looking off in one direction, when I couldn’t even see the hotel where I’d parked, I thought I had gone way too far. Then I turned the other way and realized I hadn’t gone far enough.
I wrote this a bit hastily yesterday and I realize I included the wrong picture that I described as coyote or dog prints… there were definitely some canine prints on my walk, but those might be something else? I welcome any insights here…