Winter Sunsets

Viewing a spectacular sunset is truly one of the great pleasures of life. This picture was taken in one of our favorite spots for sunset photos during early winter.

My wife and I might be called sunset seekers because we are usually lurking somewhere near the water when there is a chance for a great sunset.

We are usually not alone, people tend to congregate in the best spots to enjoy that last flash of warmth and light before the sun goes down. Maybe we are hard wired that way from hundreds of thousands of years living by the light of a campfire.

I cannot pin down why I want to watch the sun go down. It is one of the most spectacular light shows available. Here on the coast often the colors in the sky after the sunset are even better than the ones at sunset.

There is the idea that the sunset marks the point in the day when most of what I have to do is personal as opposed to business related. However, having reached the special status in life of semi-retired or un-retired, I doubt that is the case.

My guess is that it is nothing more complicated than the pure, often warm light, and beautiful colors that attract us. That with the day's activities winding down and the opportunity to catch our breath is all that we need to flock to those places where the sunset is the attraction.

There is a human need to enjoy and appreciate beauty. That natural beauty enriches our lives is a given.

Sunsets are the most cost effective way that I know to personally enjoy and share that beauty.

Seasonal peace on the beach

I only have to think back to last fall to remember the warm days in December when we saw surfers enjoying the beach.

This year is far different from our two previous falls on the shore. The cool weather has come earlier in the year, and it has been more persistent.

That means that walks along the beach are fewer and shorter. Walking on the beach as did last year the first week of December when it was seventy degrees Fahrenheit is much nicer than a stroll when the temperature has struggled to reach fifty.

Tomorrow we are actually supposed to sneak into the sixties. We might try a nice beach walk since we have only been enjoying the beach from a distance since the cooler weather took over.

My wife gives me a really hard time when I start complaining about cold weather. It has something to do with dragging her to Canada when we got married. We farmed for over a decade in a snow belt north of Fredericton, New Brunswick. Our first winter, we watched as we were buried with twenty-three feet of snow.

We came to really appreciate snowshoes. We also got very used to cold temperatures. I can remember unloading five hundred bales of straw at twenty-eight degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Every single hair on my head was covered with frost. My eye brows were even frosted.

Then there was January of 1982 when our youngest daughter was born in the middle of blizzard where the temperatures finally bottomed out at minus forty degrees.

Now I find myself complaining that the temperature dropped to 31.7 degrees Fahrenheit this morning here on the Crystal Coast.

While snow often brought a certain peace to the farm, here on the North Carolina coast cold weather and cooler waters have a similar impact.

Going for a ride in your boat or sitting on the river fishing is not nearly as much fun at fifty degrees as it is at seventy five degrees when shorts are still the uniform of the day.

Still I find that I eventually adjust to the cooler temperatures. I will soon be back out riding my bike on days when the temperature sneaks up into the sixties. I might even still take my kayak out if we can get a day or two in the seventies.

Last year I managed to take our skiff down the river on Christmas eve. I will probably continue running the boat some each week or so, just to keep the motor loosened up.

While the short days and cool temperatures limit outdoor activities somewhat, there are some nice sheltered trails in the area.

Eventually though the call of the beach will be too much, and I will find a warm day for a nice walk. Perhaps tomorrow will be one of those days.

In the meantime you can enjoy the quiet of the winter beach by watching this YouTube video, December Beach Day, that I posted earlier today. If you have the bandwidth, make certain you watch in high quality.

You can read more on the quiet of the beach at my post, The Almost Empty Beach, on Crystal Coast Living. The photo might look a little familiar

Could this be winter?

On Tuesday we headed west from the Emerald Isle, NC area. About one hundred miles east as we crossed Interstate 95 we ran into some snow squalls.

They were short-lived but impressive. As we made our way farther into the heart of the state we could see more of the signature tall white clouds which seemed to merge into the ground.

We came back to the coast on Wednesday night. On Thursday we were over on Emerald Isle and heard that snow flurries had been sighted while we were gone. At the same time our neighbors in Roanoke, Va sent us pictures of the first snow of the season.

Today, I have seen several quick snow showers. It is over forty degrees so nothing is sticking, but I am impressed nonetheless. These are the first snow flurries that I have witnessed on the coast.

With temperatures running ten to twenty degrees below normal daytime highs for November and snow in the air, I must conclude that we are having an early winter.

At one time in my life I relished the first snows of winter. Once the snow came, there were certain things that were no longer possible on the farm. There was a period of shifting gears which actually offered some opportunity for relaxation. The first snows brought an end to the frenzied pace of fall. It was a time to put some things on hold and make up a new list of what had to be done.

The second winter, 1989, after we moved from Canada, we had just moved to Roanoke, Virginia, The snow came early that winter. Five or six inches of snow remained on the ground from before Thanksgiving until after Christmas. We thought we had moved back to Canada.

That was the only fall that the snow stayed on the ground in Roanoke.

Somehow, a cloudy even snowy early winter seems to suit the mood of the country. No one really knows how to fix our problems. Perhaps if we hibernate through winter, things will be better in the spring.

If it were just that easy, there would be no complaints coming from me even if it meant some snow on the ground here on the coast.

That fall feeling

As the season begins to turn here on the coast, my thoughts are drawn back to previous falls. There are some great memories there.

One fall, probably 1974, I built the first big barn on our farm in Tay Creek, New Brunswick. I can still remember nailing up the last of the steel siding just before American Thanksgiving.

By then it was pretty cold to work outside without gloves.

In the fall of 1981 we had our cattle dispersal sale. In one afternoon we sold all two hundred head of our purebred Angus cattle. Some went as far away as Alberta. It was an amazing event that I will never forget.

About a year later I went to work in one of the first retail computer stores in eastern Canada. The transition from working outside all the time to a desk job was easier than I thought. It is a wonder that we have any farmers. Still in less than a year, I had helped open four other stores and had a number of employees working for me.

When the fall of 1984 rolled around, I joined Apple Computer for an amazing journey of almost twenty years. For those years, fall always meant a sales conference which in the later years was usually in the California. The early years were wild for a guy used to life on the farm..

At the end of one early conference in Boca Raton Starship played for us. Then there was the greased watermelon hunt with Michael Spindler on a beach that I cannot even remember.

The year 2004 brought the first fall after leaving Apple. It was a time of soul searching and trying to figure out what to do next with my life.

I ended up doing a couple of years with small companies, but I found that for the most part the only way that young companies learn is through their own mistakes. I actually time to relive corporate mistakes that I have already seen would be wasted.

Then in the fall of 2006 after lots of training I passed my real estate licensing exam for the state of North Carolina. I felt a great sense of accomplishment because I had not been certain that I could go back to school. Old computer guys can learn new tricks. The rest of that fall was spent taking even more real estate classes.

We also moved down to the coast of North Carolina in the fall of 2006. It was a risky dream of mine, but I am glad we did it. I have learned a tremendous amount and met some great people.

Fall of 2007 was a relatively successful real estate time for me. I finished the year strong and was named rookie of the year by our firm. We were actually well on the way to have a good follow-up year until the financial world fell apart this fall.

I think this fall might be remembered as my first fall of serious fishing. Last fall I was learning out to handle our boat, this year I am more focused on fishing.

There have been many pleasant days on the river and along the beach. The weather has been great, and we have caught enough fish to enjoy a few meals and to keep us excited about fishing.

Fall is always when I start to take stock of where I am and what I want to accomplish next.

Real estate continues to suffer, but at some point I know it will recover.  I am not sure that I will hang on those many years.  There are a lot of factors are going to make it a very tough place to make a living. I have my eyes open for other opportunities.

I continue to believe that the Internet will play an ever increasing role in helping people find and sell their homes. My skill set makes me well positioned to take advantage of the Internet as a marketing tool but it might be for something besides real estate.

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Update- 2014

While I am still a licensed real estate agent, I stopped actively listing properties in the fall of 2011.  I have published several books and gone back to my roots in technology.  I am now vice president of sales and marketing for WideOpen Networks.  I still managed to keep up a very active writing career on the Internet.  There are lots of links and updated information on my homepage.

Home waters

Our word is strange place these days. Technology encourages us to experience as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Exploring areas close to your home might not seem as rewarding as flying half way around the world to climb a famous mountain, but first impressions can be deceiving.

The picture above and to the left is what I consider my home waters. It happens to be about a five minute paddle from my dock. The water is part of the White Oak River, and I spend a fair amount of my time there either in an outboard powered skiff or my kayak.

While the surface looks smooth, what's below that surface is anything but smooth. Large oyster rocks (piles of oyster shells) can be just beneath the surface. The depth of the river can be anything from a few inches to over twenty feet. In the area where I paddle the most, the river is about a mile and one half wide. Ten minutes by power boat from there, the river is less than fifty feet wide. Then minutes in the other direction and the river joins Bogue Sound and not far from there the Atlantic Ocean. Of course there are also tides and winds to confound a boater.

In fact just to safely navigate the White Oak River, it is recommended that you stay in a marked channel. Sometimes the wind can blow much of the water out of the river. Even in the channel there will be places with only three or four feet of water.

Still Exploring the river is a lot of fun. Maybe in a few years, I will grow bored with the White Oak, but right now I am enjoying learning the river in detail.

The river can be a source of great peace. It can also bring storm surges and heavy waves. It can be a quiet as a pond as in my slide show, Mackerel Morning.

There are days that I push the throttle all the way forward and zoom down the White Oak to Bogue Inlet, but there are also times like today when we throw out the anchor less than five minutes from home.

Learning the river and catching its fishes have become dual passions of mine. It is fun exploring, and since there is no guide book, you have to figure it out on your own.

There is a certain amount of satisfaction in doing that. I might just be the person to write up the history of the White Oak.

Searching for new waters

A little adventure never hurts. That would especially be true when you spent Sunday afternoon in a very quiet real estate office.

Before I left for work, my wife and I decided that we had to get outside on such a beautiful day.

I suggested that we ride up the White Oak River which happens to be the river in our back yard.

She quickly agreed once she learned that any fishing would only be done in an emergency which would be defined as they are almost jumping in the boat.

Besides getting out on the water on a beautiful day, I wanted to check to see where people were fishing. Riding around and watching is a great way to find some new waters to fish.

I made it home after work by twenty minutes after five, and it took us about ten minutes to prepare our skiff and drop it in the water from the lift behind our home.

We have actually been up the river a couple of times, but at those times I was still focused on learning how to boat. Now I am comfortable enough with the boat that I can enjoy where I am going without worrying about what to do next.

We slowly went out Raymond's Gut from Bluewater Cove which is located at Hancock Point. I quickly got the boat on plane, and we headed up river.

There are only a few more channel markers after Hancock Point, but I had the advantage of our GPS system which had recorded a few fishing expeditions that I had enjoyed the previous week with my fishing buddies.

Once you are past the last channel markers and headed north on the White Oak River, mostly you are fine in the middle of the river as long as you avoid the crab pots and watch for white PVC poles which mark some oyster reefs. The river is about four feet deep at high tide in most places.

The river going north is much less complex than it is south of Hancock Point where the channel is marked all the way to Swansboro. In the section from Hancock Point to Swansboro, there are many oyster reefs which can do serious damage to your boat if you stray from the channel and do not know what you are doing.

It took less than ten minutes before Hadnot Creek and White Oak Bluffs came into sight. In just a couple more minutes I impressed my wife by going full speed through a narrow opening in the marshes. Of course I had watched others do it and had checked it out with my depth finder earlier in the week.

After that we could see River Oaks Plantation subdivision on the right. Then the White Oak began to narrow and deepen. As I slowed up, my depth finder zoomed from four feet to sixteen feet.

No long after that the river rapidly narrowed to around one hundred feet wide. Considering the White Oak is close to a mile and one half wide at Hancock Point that is big change.

As the river narrowed it also gave up being a straight river and began doubling back upon itself.

We managed to make it to the southern side of what I like to call the Stella "fishtail" which you can see from this Google Map link.

Across the flat marshlands we could see the railroad trestle and the few buildings of Stella. We could have gone a little farther and perhaps turned around at Boondocks which is a paid access point and boat ramp just on the other side of the Stella Road bridge just north of the railroad trestle.

However, the sun was getting down in the sky, and the prospects of navigating the White Oak in the dark kept me on the cautious side of adventure. The old floats that are on the multitude of crab pots are a much harder to spot in dwindling light so we turned around and headed home.

We got the boat on the lift about six thirty. By the time we carried the gear to the garage and got in the house, the sky was turning golden, and the sun was getting near the horizon.

Our little one hour trip up the river was great fun. I am looking forward to going back when we have more time. October is the best month of the year for exploring.

I posted a few slides on the web of our trip.

The joy of discovery

I have been lucky to have been in a number of places that inspire the imagination. Those were places where the landscape can dwarf your ideas.

I can still remember the first time that I saw the Newfoundland barrens from the air. It was a wilderness that seemed never to end.

Now that I am shoehorned into a lot in a very special subdivision, it is hard to stand on hill and see nothing but trees. However, it is even more special to paddle around the corner and visit a pond that had been inaccessible.

This afternoon it did not take a lot of NFL football to get me thinking about doing something outside even with the clouds that had taken away our morning blue sky.

Sometimes I think living in Carteret County creates an addiction to blue sky. We have it so often, that it becomes part of consciousness. When it is not there, we miss it. The good news is that it is there more often than not. A day like today where the sky starts blue and turns cloudy throws me for a little loop.

But I managed to get myself motivated and in my kayak in mid-afternoon. We had a very high tide. It was probably the highest that I have seen while actually on the water paddling my kayak.

When I turned the corner to head out to the White Oak River, I noticed the high water had made accessible a pond where I have often seen Herons. In fact just before I started paddling towards the pond I noticed a Great Blue Heron and a White Heron in the old tree at the back of the pond.

As soon as they saw me heading their way, they moved to another tree across the gut while I explored the pond area.

There's something special about finding and exploring a neat spot like the flooded pond. I have paddled the area for two years and never suspected that the water might get high enough to let me paddle into the pond.

It is even more fun when the hidden area is just around the corner from your home.

I did not stay very long since the idea of dragging my kayak out of there over mud did not appeal to me. I moved on before the high tide started to disappear.

My trip out into the river was an easy one with the wind behind me. I managed to fish a little, but mostly I enjoyed the solitude of the river. Only two power boats came by in the couple of hours that I was out there.

I did catch one fish which was barely as big as the Gotcha lure that I was using. Still it was nice to know that the lure was capable of attracting fish.

I have found some pretty neat spots hiking in the mountains behind our home in Roanoke,Va. On our farm in Canada I can still remember finding a wonderful spring which the previous owner of our farm had mentioned to me. It was such a neat spot that I carried a Sierra Cup back into the woods and left it hanging there for anyone that happened upon the cool waters which flowed so strongly that you could see the steam from it in the woods even with four feet of snow on the ground.

I suspect I will remember this day that the tide was high enough to let me visit the Heron's home pond. It was a special visit where I got to see our inlet from a different perspective. It just shows you that adventure can just be around the corner.

I posted a few pictures of my trip which lets you join me on my visit.