keep a 20-foot channel dredged through 

 Oregon Inlet, and that should attract 

 larger trawlers to the Wanchese docks. 

 But that's only part of the jetties' 

 benefits, according to Etheridge. Build 

 the jetties, and fishers who use Oregon 

 Inlet might not have to pay higher 

 insurance rates than other boat owners. 

 Build the jetties, and fewer people will 

 die. "I've picked up bodies," Etheridge 

 says, "and signed affidavits for bodies 

 that were never recovered." 



No doubt a stabilized inlet would 

 make passage safer for fishers. No doubt 

 it would increase opportunities to land 

 fish in North Carolina rather than 

 Virginia, a benefit to watermen, seafood 

 processors and the Wanchese Seafood 

 Industrial Park. But beyond that, the 

 doubts remain, driven by charge and 

 countercharge, study and analysis and 

 findings from all quarters. Even the 

 most neutral observers are exasperated 

 with the process. 



As I leave the Outer Banks, I drive 

 north over Bonner Bridge, craning my 

 neck to peer past the guardrails at the 



swells breaking over the inlet's 

 oceanside shoals. From the top of the 

 bridge, I see the sandy plain of Bodie 

 Island's growing spit stretching far into 

 the distance, then necking down to the 

 narrow hourglass constriction directly 

 under the bridge. Down there is an 

 Oregon Inlet perspective I haven't yet 

 experienced, so I pull onto the sand road 

 just up Hatteras Island from the bridge 

 and head south again toward the inlet. 



Driving alone on the beach always 

 makes me nervous, and my jitters aren't 

 eased by the painted sign warning of its 

 impassability at high tide. I drive past 

 the vegetated dunes and onto the barren 

 sand of the accreting flats, then to the 

 very edge of the spit at the foot of the 

 towering Bonner Bridge. It is a calm day 

 by Oregon Inlet standards, but wind- 

 driven sand still sifts across the flats, 

 distorting the shapes of distant beach- 

 combers like heat shimmer in a desert. 



Gulls hover in the wind, diving to 

 pick up pieces of fish battered on the 

 shoals and trapped in the shallow water. 

 I can see the corroded metal gallows of 



The growing sand flats on Bodie Island lie under the soaring Bonner Bridge, 

 which is itself threatened by the shifting channel. 



the Lois Joyce, sunk in December 1 982 

 and now just a few stones' throws from 

 the moving shore. Across the inlet is Pea 

 Island and the gray smudge of the groin 

 like a smear of smoke on the water. That's 

 where the line has been drawn, I think, 

 and not with a finger in the sand but with 

 boulders 9 tons heavy. 



These are the two telling perspectives 

 of Oregon Inlet. One the wild shore, 

 shifting, shaping and reshaping like a 

 living entity, breathing for all the 

 embayed waters behind it. And the other 

 the rocky emblem of man's efforts to 

 control that malleability. On this day, just 

 a thousand yards separate them, and the 

 gap is closing. 



Somewhere I've read that in past 

 times inlets weren't even named unless 

 they were a year old. Who could tell when 

 nature would conspire to close them? I 

 remember Etheridge saying that he could 

 recall days as a boy when there was but 3 

 feet of water in Oregon Inlet. Some days 

 you could cross to fish the outside waters, 

 and some days you couldn't. The natural 

 way of things. And I remember the 



resignation in his voice as I 

 leave the Wanchese docks. 

 "We're trying to satisfy 

 everybody," he says, "and you 

 know that ain't gonna work." 

 Which is one way of saying 

 that all interests regarding 

 Oregon Inlet are caught 

 between a million tons of rock 

 and a hard place. 



And one more time I 

 think of Midgett, who watched 

 the wind and water transform 

 his world. He couldn't 

 comprehend such a thing as 

 a mile-long jetty. Computer 

 modeling of hydrological 

 forces and cost-benefit 

 analyses would be utterly lost 

 on the man who witnessed the 

 birth of Oregon Inlet. But he 

 would know the raw face and 

 the unleashed force of nature, 

 and I wonder what he would 

 think of it all. □ 



COASTWATCH 13 



