It rained until Virginia. When the skies cleared, I entered an unending
T-Mobile dead zone, which left me without that directive yet reassuring little voice that
says “In a half mile, remain in the right lane and turn right onto US 17 South. Turn onto 17 South!”
At 20 miles long,
the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnels was a far longer and more beautiful crossing
than I had imagined. Everything was
shimmering, silvery and ethereal.
After the
bridge, I made a few wrong turns and had a few time-wasting off-road
adventures. Everything looked the same
to this traveler: flat farm fields, planted with yellowed soy beans that shone
golden in the late light, broken by the occasional cotton field and long
expanses of forested swamp.
As I got closer
to my destination, Columbia, the billboards began to advertise Outer Banks destinations,
and the horizon began to promise nearby water.
I spotted a road sign that said “red wolf crossing.” There was a subtle shift in the landscape, a
sense of increasing wildness and isolation.
It did not feel
like going home. It felt like going
toward something unknown and unaltered by the 21st century, a perfect
landscape for travelling back in time, hunting ancestors.
It was also blackpowder
deer hunting season in North Carolina, I learned after I checked into the
Brickhouse Inn. Two hunters in the room
across the hall from mine were also traveling back in time, using muzzle-loading
rifles to recreate an earlier hunting experience.
I was about to
learn just how much Tyrrell County -- with its sparse development, swamps,
forests and humidity -- welcomes retrospective pursuits.
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