Easter in Kill Devil Hills

“Christ the Lord is Risen Today.  Alleluia!”

Easter is a triumphant holy day for all Christians, regardless of their sects and disagreements on many issues.  It is their highest day of faith; everything pales beside it.  In Easter, they affirm that Jesus rose from being dead.  Almost everyone accepts the historical existence of Jesus, but many balk at Easter.  Dead people don’t come back to life.  They see the bad deeds and ugly politics of many Christians, pushing away the poor for Republican ideals of wealth.  They say they want no part of it.

At the top of this blog post is a picture I took today in Kill Devil Hills on Easter.  It is where the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane.  It is on the day when Christians say the devil was dealt a severe blow, but not killed.  Starting from the sand dune on the left, the Wright brothers landed three times at those white markers on the right.  Today it’s a national park with a huge monument on top of that hill.  But it’s not nearly as big as Easter celebrations throughout the world.

The Wright brothers are like my father and I judge them on what they made.  He could fix anything and didn’t talk much.  I wrote a poem recently called, “The Mason of Bolton Hall,” extolling a man based in a wall that he built of stones, having never met him.  I have never met Jesus, but his legacy has stood longer than my father or that wall.

The Wright brothers were that kind of men.  Here I show just a few scenes from what they did.  It doesn’t hurt my appreciation of them to know that they were bicyclists and ran a bike shop before testing their wings in aviation.

Leaving all that joy, history, delusion and politics behind, I headed west from Kill Devil Hills to the bay side.  I have been traveling all this time on a peninsula called Bodie Island.  It seems odd to call a peninsula an island, but they do this in remembrance that it was once an island, but the inlet has closed by natural processes, making it a peninsula.  Roanoke Sound separates Bodie Island from Roanoke Island, which is truly an island to the west.  To the north of Roanoke Sound lies the Albemarle Sound and to the south lies the Pamlico Sound.  It takes a while to get used to Outer Banks confusion of naming things.  And it takes a while to sort out the truth about Easter from its many misgivings.

Vegetation increases going west into the salt marsh with its swamps covered with what looks like grass, but is definitely not to be walked on.  Of the many species of snakes living here, the cottonmouth and the timber rattler are the only venomous ones, I’m told.

A huge live oak tree

Then comes the forest on sand dunes where sand is invisible under forest litter.  One hundred years ago this was all farmland, cleared of its trees; now it's a nature preserve and the trees have returned like triumphant outcasts.

Finally I arrive at Roanoke Sound where water is tidal, but calm, protected from waves by the Outer Banks.