Several months after Hurricane Irene washed out roads and left homes, cars and other property — as well as livelihoods and dreams — moldering in the sand, North Carolina's coastal communities are mending.
The oceanfront areas were not the only ones affected by Irene. Jerry Allegood visits the Inner Banks, along the sounds and the rivers, and chronicles the destruction Irene left behind.
Irene breached Hatteras Island in several spots, leaving islanders with no land route to the mainland. The N.C. Department of Transportation worked day and night to open N.C. 12 again, refilling breaches to the south and building a temporary bridge on Pea Island.
Days before Hurricane Irene hit the state, Spencer Rogers, North Carolina Sea Grant coastal erosion specialist, raced up and down the coast to install wave gauges. He had to keep pace with changing forecast paths. "We put three on Topsail because we were running out of time," he recalls.
This Sneads Ferry shrimper understands that knowing how to read shifting tides and winds of change is key to survival. It's the way of the watermen — using natural instincts to keep them safely afloat in an unpredictable and often risky environment.
Sand...we play in it, we stroll on it, we make castles out of it, we spread our beach towels on it. But what do we really know about it?
Share a taste of seasonal seafood with your friends and family this winter. Include these dishes in your next holiday dinner. Whether you have something traditional and filling like oyster stew in mind, or something more zesty and exciting like orange-nutmeg flounder, these recipes from Mariner's Menu: 30 Years of Fresh Seafood Ideas by Joyce Taylor are sure to impress.
You spun yourself From thick strands of salt water And a fever in the tropics, wove Your fabric coarse Around the edges, your eye Opening like a net Cast over Cape Lookout.
