"Hatteras Journal" by Jan DeBlieu

The men in my family make a yearly pilgrimage to Hatteras for the sole purpose of fishing and enjoying nature at it's most unpredictable. They always have fascinating stories to tell about the one's that got away, but have lots of good eatin' from the one's they bring home! This family ritual inspired me to read a journal from a resident of Hatteras Island. The journal is very detailed with the natural forces experienced during the year 1985.

The book is: "Hatteras Journal" by Jan DeBlieu. She is one of many writers featured on Southern Nature Writers Website.

Review on back cover by George Reiger, author of Wanderer on My Native Shore says: "HATTERAS JOURNAL should be required reading for all coastal conservationists. Although Ms. DeBlieu's examples are restricted to North Carolina's Outer Banks, their values and lessons apply anywhere along our Atlantic shore."

Excerpt Chapter Nine A FEVER FOR DRUM

At the end of a narrow, east-west road in Rodanthe, the Hatteras Island fishing pier marches into the ocean on wide-set, creosoted legs. From the boardwalk fifteen feet up, the late fall surf seems not so much to curl as to heave. What appears from the beach to be a regular and predictable rhythm looks from above to be a ceaseless and violent thrashing. Long coils of water lunge toward shore, trailing veils of spray. Peaks of water pulse, hit the pilings, split, and fade. At night the sallow beams of pier floodlights cut through spray-soaked air and fall flat against the creamy water in a strange scene of perpetual motion and shadow. Just before 12:00 on an early November night I walked four hundred yards over angry breakers to the big-game area, a platform at the end of the pier where anglers crowd to fish for red drum.

...
At the end of the pier, a row of ten-foot-long fishing rods had been propped side by side as close as the rails in a picket fence. Thirty-five fishermen in green and yellow slickers crowded in small groups and the spray-soaked light, the hooded figures were hazy, faceless, painted with shadow. No women had come out. Two teenage boys dozed on a bench in wet, rumpled sleeping bags.

...
We were all waiting for a sound, for the high-pitched whizz of line stripping off a reel. On an autumn night in rough surf, only drum and shark are likely to seize a piece of bait and run. All talk halts when a reel begins to whirl. Anglers bolt for their rods, since drum commonly strike two or three hooks at once. Once a drum takes a piece of bait, it swims straight toward the beach or straight to sea. To land it, an angler must set the hook firmly and quickly take in slack line.

She writes us into the picture and we catch the fish with the anglers. I can see why the men can't wait for next year to see who catches the biggest or the most!

I hope you enjoy her writing as much as I have. It's very informative as well.

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Write the Coast or Write it Off!
Date: 06.15.2007
Authors: Ann Cary Simpson, Bland Simpson, and Jan DeBlieu discuss the challenges facing the South's coastal region at the 2007 biennial meeting of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment.

Please insert the following URLs in your web browser to hear the readings with music by Bland Simpson.

Part One
http://woffordblog.hipcast.com/deluge/de566a4c-a6f8-dc5c-b263-2ac6278dc7ae.mp3

Part Two
http://woffordblog.hipcast.com/deluge/8ffc46c0-8e23-ef95-bb36-9755aca1e01a.mp3

Questions & Answers
http://woffordblog.hipcast.com/deluge/349aec04-ff28-7342-d006-78241b8ddc8d.mp3