The wind has been blowing from the southeast all day, and tonight it shrieks through the window screens dryly. The clouds have begun to move across the face of the waxing crescent moon. We find ourselves in Avon, NC, on the Outer Banks. There is nothing to see to the northwest, on the mainland, across Pamlico Sound. It's simply too far. We're way out in the Atlantic.
This is the ocean I know. This is the ocean that has always spoken to my heart. And yet? I haven't been to the ocean, or seen it, since we've arrived. And it's quite all right.
Most of what we're seeing out there are immense egrets, osprey, and various gulls and pipers, brown jellyfish and vast schools of some sort of tiny brown fish. There's also a lovely bunch of well-tanned young men building a spectacular vacation/rental house on the lot next door.
The rule of the week is "leisure points" wherein one gains rank according to time spent idle, napping, sleeping late, drinking before noon on an empty stomach, etc. Yet each of us is willing to sacrifice the leisure points on cooking (though mostly we leave that to Grant and John), or cleaning up (though mostly hobbitt, Mary Ann and Michael have seen to that). Our house is alternately tidy and thoroughly thrashed, but no matter. The food is exquisite (all home-made, all from scratch). The liquor is top shelf (and we've needed a permit to carry the quantities home from the ABC stores, and in our defense, we are more than a dozen adults). The company? Priceless.
Right now Grant is playing his guitar and singing.
Mary is accompanying him on the fiddle. The wind is still whistling through the screens. The paprikash that Diane made has been left out, so that we can dip the last of Grant's home-made bread (he's made bread or pizza dough every day we've been here) into the luscious sauce.
I love the feeling of the warm dry wind on my legs. I love the sound as it batters the house, and the sweet treat of fireflies and crickets is icing on the cake. (We have neither at home.)
We're honored to have been invited. Our nature is rather solitary, and we identify ourselves as hermits. This week has been all about the company - alone, we'd have experienced little of the joy that is this place, this gathering, this chemistry - not to mention the food. There is no fear here. There are no pretenses. Grant has made this gathering from his own choices - and we are simply here to enjoy one another.
I would love to learn what Grant knows. I crave the constancy he practices, to hang on to friends and shuffle them together for weeks such as this. My talents are lacking. But I'm a good student.
In the meantime, Grant and Mary play into the night, and we're grateful to hear the sonorous sounds of the fiddle, and the bright guitar strings. We are blessed. All our senses are being sated, and all at once. I'd say more, but the paprikash is calling me.
