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By afternoon, opening the door to the world outside is as welcome as sliding the bolt from its socket to open the gates of hell. Leaving the office for lunch feels something like this. First, there’s that blast, a shockwave brought by the collision of manufactured cool and cindered air. Then, a kind of temporary blindness sets in, akin to a migraine’s aura — the landscape appears stripped of color, yet it trembles. Then, there’s the desert journey across the parking lot, which, depending on the distance and your age, might reasonably qualify as a minor epic. Finally, there’s that frantic dance as one hand rolls down the windows to release the trapped heat from your vehicle while your other hand cranks the air conditioning (if you’re lucky enough to have it) before your brain is cooked. The steering wheel, cruelly, is the last thing to cool. (I’ve considered, in order to avoid first degree burns, donning white gloves to drive, but I fear some consequence reserved for true eccentricity should I become the white-gloved lady piloting her truck.) Faced with this scenario, it seems wise to eat lunch at my desk. I make a note, as I do each summer, to purchase a sunshade for the dash. Summer evenings, the man and I refuse to turn on the stove. Suppers are simple, cobbled together. A sun-warmed tomato plucked from the vine, fresh mozzarella, basil leaves, cantaloupe, and dry cured ham. Cold red wine. Yes, with ice. Even sunset, with its golden light, finds us grumbling that it’s too hot to sit outside, and too early to enjoy our evening stroll, but once the sun sets, the world opens, and comes alive. Not long after the sun slips beneath the horizon, the hard edge of heat ceases to glint, and it’s then that the world outside becomes nothing short of a wonderland. Still, too many of us retreat to the cave and the cool flicker of the television that we miss the softest hours. I grew up in the un-air-conditioned South, and though I am grateful to turn on my air conditioner in the summer, I keep the house far too warm for most of my family. I suppose I have never fully adjusted to the bone-chilling cold pumped into every office building and grocery store, no matter how empty of human life. The endless whirr and scratch of air conditioners can blot out the gentler music of a summer’s day: cicadas, the thrum of hummingbird wings, a murmured confidence. I risk sounding my age, but I believe for all we gained with air conditioning, which my husband likes to say, “is the thing that makes the South livable,” we also surrendered something precious with our climate control: the routine pleasures of a summer’s night. Here at the coast, a summer’s nighttime excursion holds many fine pleasures. A walk through our suburban Carolina Beach neighborhood often begins at the weedy empty lot near our home. There, each evening after sunset, the evening primrose unfurl. They thrive in poor soil, and if The Art & Soul of Wilmington
you look early in the day, you may see these yellow blooms in the scrub. They look like large delicate buttercups. By noon, they’ll be spent. Return at sunset for the show. You’ll notice the twisted bud shift, as if tentative, then, in a sudden rush, the flower springs open, a yellow blaze. Later, dusty moths will arrive to pollinate. The bats, too, are active in the air above us, hurling and chittering through the sky. My elderly neighbor keeps an angel’s trumpet tree on his porch, away from passersby who might be tempted to pick the large pendulous flowers. It’s a member of the nightshade family, and this particular plant is highly toxic. At night, the blooms emit a heavy apricot scent, and are pollinated by the local moths and bats. The later we head out, the more we see. After a long walk one evening, my husband and I turn the corner to see a mob of six deer in front of our house. We stood still as the deer wandered through the neighbors’ yards, then, they lunged, synchronized, toward the woods, their hooves clattering on the street. Barred owl will call through the pines, easily identified by their call: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you? We once saw an owl swoop down and pluck a screeching mouse from beneath a streetlamp. If you walk the same route long enough, you’ll see others who do the same, like the red fox that runs the same circuit through the neighborhood around midnight. Occasionally, I’ll get a call from my friend Nancy, who runs the turtle project on the island. One night she calls me at twilight: a mother loggerhead has made her crawl up the beach. We arrive just as she’s settled in her nest to deposit her eggs. A small quiet group has gathered round, at a respectable and safe distance. A policeman from the town is there, along with the “nest parents,” trained volunteers who patrol and monitor the turtle nesting activity along the coast. They remind everyone that flash photography disorients the turtles and is not allowed. I set my camera for twilight. She’s a big mama; her carapace is nearly three feet across and four feet long. And she looks ancient. Large barnacles are affixed to the shell, and smaller ones cover her leathered neck and flippers like a thick powder. When she’s done depositing her eggs, she is all business. She quickly covers her eggs and heads back down the beach. Nancy and two volunteers quickly approach the turtle since it’s wearing a tag to note the number. This particular turtle was tagged in Florida, at the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research. She’s come a long way. Then, she launches into the surf and swims beneath the waves. Perhaps our favorite place to wander after nightfall is Masonboro Island. There are few local pleasures as lovely as an evening boat trip to the island. September 2013 •
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