A Life Rule: Always Bring a Fishing Rod

We shoved off from the Edenton Marina for a cruise across the sound.  Lunch over at Mackey's.  I had yet to go over there since our move up to Northeastern 'Carolina.  Southward we went, through that tannin-stained water of the "Sea of Roanoke," about eight miles to the mouth of Mackey's Creek.  

It was a calm early-March day, and it was warmer, a welcome thing compared to the usual cold and breeze of winter and early spring.  The "wind machine," had been turned off.  It sure felt good for my skin to soak up that sun for the first time in a while, too long deprived of Vitamin-D.  

It was hard to spot the mouth of the creek, amongst the cypress and their knees and Spanish moss, it's not wide.  But it's deep, deep for a ways, way past the marina.  

We grabbed a fried seafood lunch at the marina grill, along with a cold beverage, and after eating way more than my fill, we continued to cruise up the creek.  

It's hard to describe, sometimes, the feeling of time-standing-stillness that I experience in wild places like this.  There's been logging and fishing and other industry for a long while in the sound country, up creeks like this.  This land was first "developed" long before most of the state, as colonists moved south from Virginia for fresh ground, but has since been "left behind" many other parts of the state economically.  Or, perhaps, saved.  

Winding through the old cypress in a boat or skiff, I'm immersed in this world that hasn't changed much in quite some time.  Besides some logging, it likely isn't much different than it was hundreds of years ago.  It may not see another boat today, and the turtles and ospreys and eagles will keep on living, undisturbed.  There thankfully are still places like this in our state, and hopefully we'll keep them around.  

We got up on a plane to cruise home to Edenton Bay.  On the way, though, we made a pit stop.  We'd brought a few fishing rods along.  A life rule of mine, if practicable.  It was a good decision.  It always is.