THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 12, 1996 TAG: 9611120001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A19 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: 68 lines
For a lot of people, ``beach'' is spelled s-u-m-m-e-r.
They don't even think of making a day of it on the sands in the cooler months of the year.
Well, they're missing something special. And I'm glad my wife and I came to realize this quite a few years ago.
One of our early discoveries was just how great the beaches on Ocracoke Island, N.C., could be, say, in January. Accommodations were readily had, cheaper than at other times; the flies weren't there to pester, even with offshore winds; no roasting heat or threat of sunburn blisters; beautiful sweeps of sand stretched in both directions, usually deserted, when we arrived at good shell-hunting spots; and the isolation was just plain enjoyable in itself.
We've since reaped many of the same rewards at beaches nearer our Norfolk home - on the Bay and along the ocean.
October of this year found us again making our cool little seaside pilgrimages. Just about all we needed was the prospect of a day with no rain, preferably sunny (for the brighter situations, and worrying more seriously about our skin these days, we take umbrellas just as we would in summer).
When the day came - an we've had four nice ones, pretty closely spaced, this fall - off we went with those umbrellas, a couple of chairs, beach towels, a picnic lunch (put together at home or picked up on the way), magazines, books and crosswords.
We were never disappointed in what the day brought.
Even when the air was on the chilly side, we were dressed accordingly and enjoyed the freshness of it all.
And nature put on some of the best of its shows: Squadrons of brown pelicans, larger than at other times, frequently soared by; on two days we had migrating batches of a strange species of tern with black eye stripes instead of caps; full battalions of sandpipers put in regular appearances, tritty-trotting on their fast little legs in one direction and then another as the receding wave edges exposed whatever it is they feed on in the wet sand.
And gulls always. Galore. Herring gulls and great black-backs and immatures we couldn't identify. Wheeling and scouting for the most part, but at about our lunch hour (one of the best parts for us, too), alighting to form ragged ranks around us, edging forward individually to suggest it was time for freebies, which we obligingly supplied.
A happy visitation on a couple of occasions was that by an osprey, its progress a succession of great circles low enough for us to see its fierce head and distinctive white markings.
The few other humans on the scene were nicely distant, but often close enough to make interesting watching - especially the unselfconscious toddlers unchilled by their antic dashes into the cold sea edge, or seriously heaping sand into piles for the waves to wash away.
Other treats were shoeless post-picnic walks along water's edge, the passage of great container ships and tankers out on the horizon, the closer-in activities of commercial fishing boats, leisure to take in the changing cloud shapes, wave size and ocean color as the autumnal sun proceeded along its lowering arc - all so pleasant that we're looking forward to more such experiences, perhaps really wintry, in some of the weeks ahead.
This may be the place to note that one of the biggest treats of the off-season beach, and one that will help draw us back again - is the lowering of the noise level.
And I think specifically of the blessed escape from the loud-playing portable radios of the main beach season. If there should be one on the beach, it's easy to put space between you and it.
I'd say that's the central beauty of it all. Space. Cool, heavenly space. MEMO: Mr. Hebert, a former editor, lives in Norfolk. by CNB