There is nothing more apt to illustrate life than a stilt house hovering over water set to the rhythm of a spring tide.
A friend of my granddad’s 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.
Time, 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.
So while the world is busy taking on problems fast as boats attract barnacles, I’m off to emulate my granddad’s crew. I might catch a few trout in some forgotten hole upriver or throw mullet chunks in the surf curl, hoping for a big bite.
I might spin the cast net over some shrimp or scratch up a bucket of clams near Lockwood’s Folly.
Then again, I might just watch the tide and the fiddler crabs and the ibis going home to roost as the water creeps out. I’ll rock a little in the wicker chair and maybe for good measure grumble at the dry creek like Herman would. Mostly, I’ll try to appreciate another fine Carolina day on the cusp of summer, thankful that some things haven’t changed.
Frank Benson’s Hunting & Fishing Art celebrates the sporting intaglio prints that mark Benson as the master of the sporting print. Over his lifetime, Benson produced over two thousand oils, watercolors, ink washes, and intaglio prints. He was exhibited in museums and galleries, was granted academic honors, and earned so many awards he became known as America’s most medaled painter. But intaglio printmaking stands as his unequaled, singular achievement in a career replete with great achievements. Benson is credited with developing in America the genre of sporting art and distinguishing himself as the dean of American etchers. Buy Now
