JL A Ay family has vacationed 

 at Emerald Isle each autumn for eight 

 years. We're happiest to go when 

 fewer porch lights illuminate the 

 dunes at night, the daytrippers are 

 sparse and the heat is diminished as 

 our part of the hemisphere turns its 

 face from the sun. 



Until last fall, I thought I'd 

 discovered every simple pleasure of 

 this part of North Carolina's central 

 coast: Plump green peanuts, boiled at 

 a roadside stand in Swansboro. 

 Lightly steamed oysters shucked in an 

 out-of-the-way restaurant on Highway 



58. The cool solitude of a walk within 

 the stone walls of Fort Macon. 



Somehow I missed a more 

 obscure retreat just southwest of 

 Bogue Banks. I'd heard about Bear 

 Island, a slim, undeveloped preserve 

 managed by the state. According to the 

 map, it's a 2 1/2-mile ferry ride from 

 the berth of Hammocks Beach State 

 Park tucked off Highway 24. But I 

 wasn't tempted to venture over until 

 the end of our beach trip last fall. My 

 mom and I caught the last ferry on a 

 weekday, leaving us less than an hour 

 to explore before the park-operated 



pontoon returned us to the mainland. 



It was a half-mile walk by gravel 

 path from the ferry dock to the beach in 

 front of the bathhouse. A few beach- 

 combers loitered around the swimming 

 area there but the surf was rough. I left 

 Mom to look for shells and decided to 

 devour what I could of the wilderness. 

 Not a soul preceded me. A few hundred 

 yards found me at the sign pointing 

 toward the nearest primitive campsites. 

 Following the path into a huge crater of 

 dune, I lost the sound of the wind and 

 ocean as I descended like an ant lion 

 into its sandy funnel. At the lowest 



2 JULY/AUGUST 1996 



