Carolina Beach Fort Fisher

by Lois DeWitt
(Wilmington, NC)

Carolina Beach, A mild November, 2006

After nine years in Massachusetts, I moved down to Wilmington, North Carolina -- away from the icy, snowy winters. My Standard poodle, Charley, and I walk along the beautiful shore at Fort Fisher. It is February, sixty degrees, breezy and only a few people on this vast, beige-colored beach.

Even in the summer, it is never so crowded with tourists and surfers, that I can't take a leisurely stroll at dawn or dusk and feel peaceful and inspired by the infinity of the graying horizon.

Fort Fisher is at the end of a long peninsula which begins with the port city of Wilmington and then, going southward, narrows to the island of Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and finally, Fort Fisher. There are still the odd-shaped grassy mounds of the battlements, where, at the end of the Civil War, the Northern and Southern armies met in a thunderous and furious battle which would signal the end of a long and arduous conflict.

There are rows of live oaks, stunted and twisted by the wind, into graceful, sinuous shapes. Several years ago, to stop the erosion that had been eating the beach away for decades, a revetment was built--comprised of huge rocks that guard the shoreline.

I built castles in the rust-colored sand along the St. Croix river in Minnesota. I have dined on wine and cheese on the beach with my daughter at Truro, MA. We have hiked the carriage roads and inlets at Bar Harbor, ME. I have paddled around in the green blue waters of Sanibel, FL.

But, Fort Fisher is minutes from my house and, this time of year, practically my own private beach.