Fall Break.

As I open the door to the trailer, the stale, mildew smell of beach houses closed up too long welcomes me. I turn on the light, highlighting the final dripping of a turned off water system dried in a brown mush at the bottom of my kitchen sink. The back door sticks, but I push on through, out into the dark yard to find the water valve. I open its casing, and pause, wondering if I stick my hand into that black hole, will I run into something alive? A spider? A bug? My daughter yells, "Mama, I gotta go potty!" again from the back porch. I reach into the dark, find the valve and turn. I hear the water woosh through the pipes.

As Sarah sits on the potty, I walk around the outside of the trailer, looking for damage. I know a neighbor repaired some underpinning, but otherwise, everything looks good. I hadn't intended to stay away for so long. Hurricanes, a series of illnesses spawned in preschool, and travel to conferences has kept me away, but now I am glad to be able to see with my own eyes that all is well. While Bouge Banks is a North Carolina sea island, it is not one of the Outer Banks, which jut out into the ocean and get hit more fiercely with wind and water. I am thankful for this relatively potected position as I survey the utter lack of damage.

Hurricanes are to North Carolians what earthquakes are to Californians. While I was living in the SF Bay Area, I could never understand the casual attitude toward earth shaking. And my friends, who called or e-mailed me from other parts of the country as the weather channel freaked them out with its swirling graphics and live reports in the worst spots, could not understand my casual attitude toward high winds and hoizontal rain. "Don't you know what hurricanes can do?" they said.

I grew up around here. I don't remember all the names of the storms when I was younger, but I started keeping track when I was in college. I was in North Mrytle Beach for Hurricane Bob, which hardly made the hurricane party worth it, though I did go to the beach to see the massive waves rolling over top the pier. I was in Columbia, SC, when Hurricane Hugo hit, cowering in my basement as tornados snapped trees on my street. Three weeks after Hugo, I traveled to the Ilse of Palms to help set up a soup kitchen for returning residents, and I was shaken by the empty shells of houses sitting in the streets. I evacuated for Hurricane Bertha from Bouge Banks to my parent's home in Kinston, and a tree took out part of the deck there. Hurricane Floyd flooded my home town, and my dad sent me pictures of the Neuse River, usually a lazy, muddy, over-glorified creek, lapping on the second story of the Holiday Inn. I was here in my trailer during Tropical Storm Alex, and though the wind was a bit wild at times, I didn't worry too much.

So, yes, I know what hurricanes can do. But I guess my long experience with storms makes me like the devil I know better than the devil I don't.

So, I come back here, and will continue to come back here. I brought my pile of papers to grade and my list of job applications to complete. And I will sit with pen in hand, watching the sun set over the Sound, glad that so far, the storms have not washed this narrow piece of land into the sea.