{"id":1174,"date":"2012-02-02T00:45:02","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T04:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/?p=1174"},"modified":"2012-02-02T19:19:06","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T23:19:06","slug":"the-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/2012\/02\/02\/the-call\/","title":{"rendered":"The Call"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each summer my family spends a week on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore<\/a>, a 70-mile stretch of barrier islands along the coast of North Carolina. \u00a0The islands are so narrow that you can see and hear the Atlantic Ocean swelling through the curves of the sand dunes and turn 180 degrees on the spot to look at Pamlico Sound, which spans the gap between the islands and the mainland.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The beaches are broad and clean and unencumbered.\u00a0 The hardy residents have done a fantastic job of keeping commercialization off the islands and nearly all of the businesses, restaurants, grocery stores, and even gas stations are locally owned and operated.\u00a0 Within the towns, everything is within biking or walking distance.\u00a0 The elaborately-porched cottages stand high on stilts, armored against the eastern wind by dark wooden shingles.\u00a0 It\u2019s simple, unrefined, and real\u2014the people who come here come for the sea and nothing more, because nothing more is there and nothing more needs to be.<\/p>\n

Every facet of island life is defined by the sea.\u00a0 Its presence is constant and constantly influential.\u00a0 It\u2019s the vibrating, swirling, crashing force which has called, seductively, to each and every salty soul suspended in its grasp on the narrow shore.\u00a0 Its call is so strong, in fact, that it can routinely swallow up the rickety haven its disciples have created on the narrow shore and still maintain its hold.\u00a0 With every major storm, the Atlantic Ocean overtakes the dunes and sends homes, boats, businesses, and roads spilling into the Sound.\u00a0 As the storms clear, the devoted disciples faithfully emerge to rebuild their paper houses and happily await the next surge.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re helpless, humans.\u00a0 We like to think of ourselves as serene masters of this world, creating stunning technologies and barreling through landscapes with the bloated delusion that our superficial purposes matter, that our impacts matter and will last.\u00a0 But the truth is that the only true masters are the forces of nature and marvel or degrade as we might, we are subject to their whims.\u00a0 As gracious inferiors, the most we can do is live mindful of this fact and make every effort to respect, acknowledge, and enjoy our role in the balance.<\/p>\n

Enjoying time in Hatteras necessitates an awareness of the temporality of the stark human comforts stationed there and a gradual, meditative refusal to depend on them.\u00a0 The same is true in any case of growing close to an environment.\u00a0 We must accept the supremacy of the natural world and learn to cede our control.\u00a0 Our time here is short, but we\u2019re blessed to bear witness to the truly divine eternal forces ebbing and flowing across and inside the earth.\u00a0 These eternal forces bewitch us, baffle us, and challenge us but time after time, when they call, we answer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here’s an old favorite <\/a>for the week, pretty fitting I think.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I encourage anyone and everyone to check out the artist, Andrew Bird<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each summer my family spends a week on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, a 70-mile stretch of barrier islands along the coast of North Carolina. \u00a0The islands are so narrow that you can see and hear the Atlantic Ocean swelling … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}