Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/299259
A T friend of my granddads used to sit on our porch in a wicker rocking chair and watch the creek go by. That creek is part of the Elizabeth River estuary, a narrow slough through a wide marsh that floods up under our Oak Island shack on high water. On most low tides it drains to a shallow trickle and almost goes dry. Herman would rock, sipping something strong in a plastic cup, rattling his ice cubes. While his cronies played cards, mended cast nets, shucked shrimp, Herman would stare at the creek and shake his head. Oysters spat and popped. "Boys," he'd say, "I don't think she's coming back this time." My dad and granddad have told that story through the years, and I always think of it during the big spring tides. Last week I sat out a howling Nor'easter in the rickety house, watching the creek flood, pause, lean west and then suck out of the basin as though it wouldn't return. But eventually it did, and the day seemed to brighten on cue as water crept back through the marsh. I wondered how many times it had done that. And I wondered how many tides the weathered place had seen – from its moonshining days, through the nets and crab pots, generations of families, holidays and beer parties, new beginnings and old ghosts. There is nothing then, I thought, more apt to illustrate life than a stilt house hovering over water set to the rhythm of a spring tide. ime, work and relationships are not static. They shuffle us back and forth, build and erode layers of our lives the way rising water carves new channels and leaves behind silt. Just the same, very few things bring us back to a sense of carefree truth like a few days in the salt. he author's creek shack, in the same spot since the 1950s or earlier, has always been a gateway to the treasures of the tide. T