On a recent drive from Asheville, North Carolina, up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, I encountered a wall of kiln-dried and neatly stacked firewood three times my height and, on Ox Creek Road a few miles later, a stable so dilapidated the weather was the same inside as out.




Then, along the Mountains-to-Sea Trail that parallels the Parkway in that area, I walked upon the remains of Rattlesnake Lodge, the summer home of Dr. Chase P. Ambler and his family. The two-story structure, originally surrounded by a terraced garden, tennis court and swimming pool (!), burned in 1926, a mere 13 years after it was built. Crumbling stone walls are all that remain amidst the hardwood trees.

Lighted coals smoking in his beard, the pirate Blackbeard terrorized the Atlantic seaboard for years, stealing merchant ship cargo and murdering all who challenged him. The savage pirate met his demise near Ocracoke Island, the southernmost of North Carolina’s Outer Banks in November 1718 at the hands of British Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard. According to legend, when Maynard beheaded the pirate and threw his body in the water, the body swam seven laps around the ship before sinking to the bottom of Pamlico Sound.

My family and I spent a peaceful Thanksgiving holiday in Blackbeard’s former stomping grounds. We stayed in a three-bedroom house on Fig Tree Lane, ate seafood for dinner and walked everywhere we went.

Boat docks in Silver Lake, on the western side of the island

Ocracoke Island sits 23 miles off the North Carolina coast and a quarter mile south of Hatteras Island. It usually measures 17 miles long and a mile wide. The deserted, windblown beaches of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore make up the northern 90 percent of the island, and a small village of hotels, restaurants, shops, homes and the smallest K-12 school in the state, makes up the southern 10 percent.

With no bridges connecting it to the mainland, Ocracoke is accessible only by the Cedar Island, Swan Quarter and Hatteras ferries that arrive and depart several times each day. We waited in the rocking chairs at the ferry terminal for the mustached men to give us permission to board and, once cruising across the sound at a steady 12 mph, could see dolphins leaping in front of the ferry and pelicans and seagulls hovering behind.

In case of emergencies

Ocracoke’s whitewashed lighthouse, built in 1823, is the second oldest of those still in use in the United States. It’s light reaches out 14 miles over the sea.

A couple buildings in Ocracoke Village stand more than three stories tall and a few shops sell kitsch like keychains and coozies, but many parts look as if they haven’t been touched for a hundred years. Gnarled oaks, red cedars and wax myrtles are rooted in the island’s sandy soil; crushed oyster shells litter the unpaved roads (making bare feet a bad idea); and every now and then, you come across a fenced rectangle containing the mossy headstones of a family graveyard.

My family strolling beneath the oak trees shell-covered Howard Street

Pelicans perched over Silver Lake

Mallards resting in the rain

Island natives — whose surnames are often Howard, Styron or Garrish — still speak with a brogue inherited from the Scotch-Irish who settled the island during the 18th century. On their tongues, “there” becomes “thar,” “fire” becomes “far” and “high tide” becomes “hoi toide.”

Music is central to island life. Every Wednesday night from June to September, local musicians perform for a crowd of locals and visitors at the Deepwater Theater, a screen-enclosed deck tucked among a grove of low, crooked trees. Under the tin roof and the rafters strung with lights, performers sing lively and sorrowful stories to a crowd sitting captivated in green lawn chairs.

In addition to eating a feast of turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce during the holiday weekend, we walked on the beach, explored the shops and art galleries about to close for the winter and listened to a post-Thanksgiving Ocrafolk music concert in the community center. It was there I purchased a piece of homemade gingerbread cake and dropped it on the floor before paying.

My uncle Jim tossing a disc for his dog Sammy along the national seashore

We also walked around Springer’s Point, the highest spot on the island and home to a grove of especially impressive trees, like this one:

The headstone of Ikey D., the favorite horse of Sam Jones, former owner of Springer’s Point

I’m not sure when it was, exactly, that I realized I was different from the other campers.

Maybe it was when they started a fierce splash war, and I had no interest in participating. Or when the conversation turned to hunting knives, and I had nothing to contribute. Or it could have been when I noticed that everyone else could stand up and pee from their canoes, while I had to paddle to shore and get out.

OK, fine: I am not pubescent, and I am not male. But there’s not THAT big a difference between a 27-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy, is there? Boy Scouts is for everyone, and plus, I think bathroom humor is funny too!

I joined Greensboro’s Troop 203 on a paddling trip down the White Oak River last weekend. It’s the troop my father scoutmastered for 10 years and is still involved with today. And, in my defense, there were many adults along, several of them women.

We slid our canoes into the water near the coastal town of Maysville, North Carolina on Saturday morning, setting off on a 20-mile journey down a blackwater river toward the Atlantic.

Rain fell steadily all the first day, and the mist that hung over the water lent a peaceful but eerie mood to the setting. The narrow river twisted and turned, cut back on itself and changed its mind. The boys belted out songs, laughed loudly, cursed each other for not paddling.

The decomposing plants in the swampy White Oak River Basin produce tannic acid, which naturally discolors the water, giving it the appearance of black tea.

We pulled off and camped beside the river as it began to grow dark. Burritos on a campstove. A thunderstorm at night. I wore about 50 more layers than my fellow campers, who walked around in shorts.

The burrito-making machine. Mmmmm.

Pumping water from the river so we don’t all die from bacterial infections.

The sun came out on the second day. As we neared the ocean, the river widened, the trees on shore gave way to grasses, and the wind picked up. We rolled up to the takeout around noon, packed wet gear into our cars and begged our dads to stop at Bojangles on the way home.

The energy and rhythm of the mob swept me up, and before I fully understood what was happening, I was Jazzercising with the rest of them.

If you had asked three days ago, I would have told you Jazzercise died in the 80s along with mall bangs, leg warmers and belted leotards. But that is just not the case. Jazzercise is alive and kicking.

It is also tapping its feet, swinging its arms and thrusting its pelvis.

The women of the Jazzercise Fitness Center in Greensboro led an hour-long Jazzercise session to warm up participants for a 5K walk/run to benefit breast cancer research last weekend. I participated. Accidentally.

Aerobics does not come easily to me. The only other experience I’ve had with the activity was a step class I took toward a PE credit in college. It ended badly. As everyone else in the class kicked and stepped, turned around, and kicked and stepped again, I jumped and flailed and tripped over my platform. I tried to sneak out in the middle of class, but had to put away the platform AAAAAND the four blocks under it. Not very subtle.

I felt only slightly more coordinated on Saturday. Following our leader, 200 women and I stepped three to the right, kicked, stepped three to the left. We rolled our shoulders, popped our hips, and did a series of exaggerated pelvic thrusts, all in unison. It was actually kind of fun.

When I told my sister Laura about my experience later that day, I met silence on the phone line. “Jazzercise, Christina?” she said. “You are no longer allowed to make decisions for yourself. From now on, run everything by me.”

Learn Jazzercise moves, including the Jazz Stretch, Attitude Lift, Flick Kick, Heel Hop and Hip Rock, here.

Become a Jazzercise instructor here.

It was 5:30 a.m., too early to be awake, let alone dressed head to toe in spandex. But there I was, walking in the dark toward a field of bicycles, wearing more skin-tight elastic than a cheap hooker.

I participated in the 2008 all-women SheROX triathlon a couple weekends ago at the Latta Plantation Park, a 19th Century cotton plantation near Charlotte, North Carolina that’s now a living history farm and 1,343-acre nature preserve. The sprint-distance event included a 700-meter swim, a 17-mile bike ride and a 3.1-mile run.

I’d competed in three triathlons before this one: one in North Georgia and two along the waterfront in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I love swimming and cycling and can tolerate running well enough, and the three sports back-to-back make for an exciting challenge.

The sun began to rise during the second half of my there-and-back swim through Mountain Island Lake. With every right-side breath, I could see the pinkish glow of the sky reflecting off the calm, dark water, and I would think to myself, “Am I there yet?”

Just over 14 minutes later, when the answer to that question was finally ‘yes,’ I ripped off my swim cap and ran barefoot up to the grassy transition area, where my bicycle awaited among 400 look-alikes. Fortunately, I had memorized its position and managed to locate it without too much trouble.

After clipping the strap on my helmet, fastening the velcro on my cycling shoes and wheeling my bike out the wrong exit, back into the transition area and out the right exit, I was off, pedaling the country roads at speeds not too hard to fathom.

At the end of the bike ride, my legs and my lungs (which tend toward asthmatic when heavily taxed) were ready to take a break in a chaise lounge by the lake. But I forced them to push through the run.

Ow. Legs.

It took me just over an hour and 37 minutes to finish, placing me third in my age group and 15th overall. I came home with the first trophy I’ve received since my high school swim banquet nine years ago — and celebrated it all with a tremendous waffle cone of Moose Tracks ice cream.

Glad to be sitting

Butt sweat art