From a place of humility rather than from one of bragging, I can say that I have traveled quite a bit for a girl from a small, Eastern European country. I climbed many a mountain in my day, in several places in Romania, Turkey, all over the American Rockies and Smokies, as well as climbed a few cliffs and rocky Mayan temples in the Central American jungle. I have been hiking and climbing since I was 6 or 7 years old – not the professional, competitive type, I am a home body at heart, but the easy, relaxing type of hiking, where you can take it easy and stop (often) for a break and for pictures. Always stop for pictures. Trails and I are good friends. The best of them, really.
I even climbed a limestone mountain covered
by thermal spring water in the heart of the Turkish dessert. I might have
slipped here and there in my journeys, but never (that I can remember) fell. No.
The fall was going to be on this skinny trail in the middle (not quite) of the
Atlantic Ocean. At sea level, surrounded by nothing but water, with all the pelicans
and gulls to watch over me and laugh.
I was fed up with the house. We have still been
mostly isolating (less than last year, but still not back to our normal travel
schedule yet), still being in the house too much this summer. We had to give up
weekends and could not go anywhere because one time there was a shortage of gas
(we could not venture too far from our town for fear of running out of it and
not being able to find a gas station to refill). We had to give up a couple of
weekends because of constant rain (tropical storm season!), or health reasons
(ah, well, what can you do about that?!). But this weekend, we were going to be
out, darn it. Come hell or high water, we were going to drive to the
beach and just shoot some birds for a few hours. (Spoiler: nothing ever good
will happen when you say “hell or high water”).
We had a lovely seafood meal at Elijah’s on
Wilmington’s waterfront of the Cape Fear river, we walked the streets of the
city in 108 degree (according to my car’s thermometer) heat, we visited The
Bellamy Mansion on Market Street – a gorgeous ante-bellum mansion that speaks
volumes about that gone with the wind era, and we finally headed to
Carolina/ Kure beach to walk around Fort Fisher, a military fort since the times
of the American Civil War.
The Cape Fear Memorial Bridge - Wilmington, NC
I have never seen this boardwalk this empty
Empty streets at Chandler's Warf in downtown Wilmington. The extreme heat at 1 PM sent everyone indoors, no doubt.
The Bellamy Mansion, 1861
On the map, trying to plan for the trip to
The Fort, I had seen these formations in the water that looked like a dam made
of rocks piled together. The dam started at Fort Fisher and it kinda
disappeared into the ocean, according to Apple Maps. It looked like a great
place to shoot some water birds, fishermen’s boats, the Fort Fisher Ferry.
We parked outside The Fort and walked
across some sand dunes towards the water. Then, we saw the dam – long, winding
through the calm waters, the Cape Fear river on the right, the Atlantic Ocean
on the left. Sea gulls, pelicans, cormorants were flying above and we were
trying to catch some with our cameras. Crabs were burying in the sand and
dragon flies were sunning on reeds. The air was paralyzed with heat. You could
not even smell the salt of the ocean, because there was no breeze – everything was sleepy and silent, except
for the chatty gulls every now and again.
Various shots around Fort Fisher and from The Rocks
A shot from The Rocks, looking out to their "end" which we did not reach...
I wanted us to walk those rocks as far as
we could walk them. And we did. For as far … until bam! I went down like a
billion pound sack of potatoes and rattled the world! The dam had not for one second
seemed wet or slippery! I personally had not seen any warning signs that it
might be. There were people on it, walking and taking in the ocean air,
people fishing, kids running around, dogs prancing. The rocks were porous and
dry, with the hot early afternoon sun baking them – 108 degrees, remember?! I did not see one person losing a
footing or wobbling in the very least. The fact that my foot all of a sudden
slipped like I was walking on ice was a total shock. And down I went – sun glasses
flew one way, my camera (around my neck) hit the ground hard, and my left
thigh, knee, ankle, wrist, and elbow all served as cushion between the rest of
my body and the black, grimy, probably algae-covered rock, where oyster shells
were cemented probably for centuries, sharp side up (of course!) … The rock
scraped my skin off my thigh in two areas about the size of dollar bills. The
shells cut deep into my flesh in so many spots I can’t count. My first thoughts
were: “Oh, please don’t let any bacteria run into my blood stream from this sea
muck!” and “Ouch! That’s gonna hurt tomorrow!”
My husband was livid with worry, ensuring
nothing was broken (nothing seemed broken or not working). We started walking
towards the car. I guess this was as far as we could go.
Another couple with a dog saw this and offered
help, even chocolate. I politely declined, but during our exchange both the
lady and I noticed their dog was bleeding from one foot – the dog, too, had
slid earlier, they shared, and probably cut one of the paws in the sharp oyster
shells. I was walking just fine, but I could tell my thigh was starting to
swell up. Thank goodness I am loaded with hand sanitizer, so, I bathed all the
wounds in it even before we got to the car where we had disinfecting alcohol.
Back home, I did a little research on The
Rocks, as the dam is called. Almost every site that had a story on them (a long
rock jetty built and completed in 1881 to aid navigation by stopping shoaling
in the Cape Fear River) warned against walking on them because they are
slippery and sharp (who knew?!). They also said they connected Fort Fisher to
Zeke’s Island and at high tide they become completely covered leaving tourists
who walk them all the way stranded on the island. They mentioned in several
spots how the local authorities are called frequently to tend to cuts and
cruises from the frequent falls of unassuming foot travelers like us.
I hope you agree from some of the pictures – the walk was all worth it. It’s one of those “end of the world” feeling this place has, where the Cape Fear pours into the ocean. Would I do it again or recommend it: probably, yes to both, but … do your research before you go there, not after like me! Get some good shoes (people were walking in thong flipflops, I had hiking shoes on, and still!) with serious rubber grips and walk slowly! It’s definitely a place I wanted to explore, because it’s like no other I have ever explored. Now, I also have a heck of a tale to tell that will make it even more memorable. My childhood best friend’s grandpa used to tell us all the time that you never want a trip to be eventless, because you’ll never remember it. Well this one, friends, will be remembered for a long while to come …
