us to watch it erupt at night and bungeed from Bloukrans Bridge in South Africa. Before our son left for school, my husband and I feared we would be inconsolable when he left, and that we would miss beyond measure his fine company and good cheer. Oh, yes, it was tough to say good-bye at his dorm. Yes, we miss him. Yet despite our friends’ dire warnings that our lives would be immeasurably dimmed by his leaving, we have not been sad. To the contrary — our happy surprise is that his college adventure feels truly good and right, for him and for us. With our newfound freedom, my husband and I find we enjoy the renewed dailiness of our lives as “just a couple.” It feels slightly wrong to confess the truth: Our son is having a grand time without us, and my husband and I are also enjoying our newfound freedom. Though we’d like to take “cheap” vacations to exotic locations, these must be delayed during his college years. No matter, the simple walk we take down the Fort Fisher trail reveals great beauty and excitement. Along the trail we have seen many things. In September, the dragonflies descended, and perched on dead tree branches. We noticed how they balance themselves with their front legs in even a strong wind, and how their front legs are slightly split. On another walk, we were followed for a quarter-mile by a flock of rusty blackbirds and common grackles. We finally realized that we were flushing the grasshoppers, their prey, from the brush. We learned the favored trees of a merlin, a northern harrier and, for a short while, a juvenile peregrine falcon. One day we turned a corner on the path and saw a large buck. He was thirty feet away, but did not move until we passed from his sight. We learned that the spring tides cause the path to flood, and that if you time your walk just so, you may wade for quite a while in a foot or two of water. We saw two American avocet in a saltwater pond in the marsh. We marveled at an osprey, and how it could fly with a heavy thrashing mullet in its talons. We learned the favorite perch of the belted kingfisher, the tricolor 42
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heron, and the shy green heron. We learned where the dark marsh rabbit likes to feed. We watched the marsh itself change. The needlerush darkened, and the marsh myrtle bloomed and its seeds blew everywhere, like a giant dandelion. The air and water cooled. The dragonflies vanished. The rusty blackbirds left. The raptors began perching lower, and instead of dragonflies and grasshoppers, we’d find feathers strewn on the path. We left earlier on our walks as we lost the light. One cold evening, where the trail ends near the Fort Fisher basin, we were greeted by bright monarchs floating above the observation deck. Then we noticed the orange flash on the nearby cedars. Then, as our eyes adjusted, we saw that hundreds of monarchs were settling down to roost for the night. The next day, they were gone. We’ve discovered that, after a cool spell, the glass lizards, water snakes and copperheads are active, and that we must keep an eye on what’s underfoot as well. Some days my husband and I are alone on the path; sometimes other people are out there as well. One day we ran in to a mother with her three boys. We were ahead of them on the trail. The oldest, a quiet teen who I later discovered has autism, was startled when he first saw us. He paused and appeared to struggle before deciding he could join us on the observation platform. “It’s beautiful out here,” I ventured. He nodded and stood looking at the vast marsh. “I come out there,” he said, “because being in nature is good for the mind.” His mother and younger siblings joined us. They borrowed our binoculars to watch the pale full moon rise over the dunes, while the teen headed back down the path ahead of us. His mother asked if he had spoken to us, and then told us that he had just started walking on this path, and that he wanted to share it with his family. “What could be better?” my husband replied. I gave him a kiss, and we went on our way. b The Art & Soul of Wilmington