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    Down East Carolina
    Down East Carolina
    Down East Carolina
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    Down East Carolina

    By Bert Brun

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    About this ebook

    After running a Victorian house Bed and Breakfast for four years at the top of Seattle's Capital Hill, two seniors want something completely different and hatch a plan to move a cottage to the edge of a beautiful, remote tidal marsh in eastern North Carolina. They run into unexpected difficulties but persevere and then spend the next eight years enjoying observing the wild animals all about them and learning the cultural ways of the area.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBert Brun
    Release dateOct 5, 2011
    ISBN9781465709417
    Down East Carolina
    Author

    Bert Brun

    Retired oceanographer. Also worked as a high school teacher, rubber plantation inspector in Sumatra, and fisheries administrator in New Zealand. Bachelor and master degrees in science from New York state universities. First got the writing bug while in college and have published eight books in last 10 years plus three plays produced. Lived in eight states, most recently in Alabama, with wife Ann, four dogs and seven cats.

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      Book preview

      Down East Carolina - Bert Brun

      DOWN EAST CAROLINA

      By Bert Brun

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © 2011 by Bert Brun

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Down East Carolina

      By Bert Brun

      Foreword

      Why do you want to live in a swamp?

      The five year old girl asked us soon after hopping from her grandparents’ car as they arrived for a visit to our remote outpost on Banjo Creek. Her grandpa’s face reddened at the tactless question from his granddaughter.

      Naomi and I struggled with our answer, and ever since then I've pondered -- why indeed? Was it my boyhood Swiss Family Robinson fantasy being played out? A foolish re-enactment of Walden Pond?

      This book is an attempt to bring to life for the reader the reasons for our eight and a half year affair, mostly love, occasionally not, with life on the tidewater in down east Carolina. The final chapter offers a reasoned answer -- no peeking till you read the whole case.

      1. THE SEARCH FOR EDEN

      It's hard to find. UPS drivers have given up. In spite of our extremely detailed instructions, would-be visitors have called, hours late and hopelessly lost. More than once, Naomi has walked down our narrow dirt-gravel track and waited at the edge of the paved road to catch guests as they come winging by, for the fourth or fifth time. If it’s nearing dusk, she takes a flashlight to wave them down. (No one in his right mind would try it at night).

      The trouble seems to be that the edge of the paved road inclines up, then the broad grassy shoulder slopes down, before merging into our barely discernible lane, which quickly disappears into the trees. The newcomer therefore hasn’t a clue from his driver’s seat that the opening even exists. The timid just won't go into the slight suggestion of a tangled tunnel. More than one first-time visitor's eyes are big as saucers after negotiating the way in over our frequently pot-holed track. Usually city people are the worst -- it’s just too wild for them. We try to explain that we like it that way.

      Here's a typical dialog with a first-timer:

      Visitor: how did you ever find it?

      Bert: on a map. I'm a map freak. I got a job once in New Zealand because I liked the way it looked on the map. I simply applied and got lucky. Best job I ever had, too, lived there almost three years.

      Naomi: we knew we wanted to be within a day's drive of our respective families, most of whom live in Maryland, Virginia or West Virginia,

      V: but why on a marsh?

      B: some people think marshes are beautiful. I'm one of them. We knew we wanted waterfront, it's affordable here. Where we are it’s quiet, no noisy motor boats, in fact only one other house is on Banjo Creek, though there’s a couple out at the mouth where it meets Pungo Creek. The complete privacy is wonderful -- we sometimes walk around in the nude

      N: we do not! But we do love the privacy.

      V: you still haven't explained how you found this exact spot. There must be hundreds of miles of marshland hereabouts.

      B: as I said, I love maps. Got hold of some for the area and picked out Belhaven, wrote the Chamber of Commerce and liked what they sent me. The town looked neat and appealing. We thought it would be worth a real time look.

      N: then we took some scouting trips, from Seattle, over two years, as Bert's retirement date came closer. Meantime, I kept running the Bed and Breakfast we owned on Capitol Hill in Seattle.

      B: at the time we thought we might go on with a laid-back B. and B. operation here, it’s just off the Intracoastal Waterway and we envisioned glamorous yachtsmen pulling up at our doorstep.

      N: but I decided I’d had enough of B. and B.s

      V: sounds like you just stumbled on the exact location.

      B: more or less. Early on, Naomi took a fancy to an eighty five year-old Carolina cottage in Bath, a nearby quaint village. The house was a real fixer and the price was right.

      N: then our realtor, Jim Roper, sent us an aerial photograph of a long, four-acre undeveloped waterfront lot.

      B: Jim’s markings showed a narrow wooded strip back from the paved country road fronting onto the marsh, with a fifty foot inlet carved into it. It seemed worth a look so I came down after a business trip for the government to Washington DC. I was hooked from the first time I walked down the path which led through the woods out to the tidal creek and a terrific view.

      N: he called, all excited. Bert’s not usually over-enthusiastic about things. The wild idea of moving the old house to the beautiful lot suddenly got started in our minds.

      B: from the start, we envisioned it setting out at the water’s edge. We worked out two offers with linking contingencies, such that if any one part fell through, the whole deal was off. One of the contingencies had to do with getting a permit ensuring that no damage would be done to the wetland environment and its creatures, which relates to some work I used to do for the government, so now this time I was on the other side.

      V: how did the house move go? That must have been tricky.

      N: you have no idea. We made the arrangement with a house mover, then a week before the move he announces that the two-story house won't clear all the wires over the ten mile trip and he's got to chop the top four feet off.

      V: Oh no!

      B: the worst of it was that for the next two weeks after the move there were thunderstorms almost every day. The water got through the plastic coverings and the place got flooded.

      V: not a good start. By the way how did you ever get the house in here? Not down that narrow little track I just came on.

      N: we got an easement from the farmer to the north. There are farms on either side of our woods.

      V: quite a story.

      B and N: we think so. Things have worked out pretty well.

      Our private, spooky-to-some, little lane has a low spot in the middle and on exceptionally high tides; when heavy rainfalls, that area gets flooded, essentially marooning us for a short while at least as far as car egress is concerned. A condition of the building permit was that the structure must

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