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    North Carolina's Barrier Islands: Wonders of Sand, Sea, and Sky
    North Carolina's Barrier Islands: Wonders of Sand, Sea, and Sky
    North Carolina's Barrier Islands: Wonders of Sand, Sea, and Sky
    Ebook175 pages1 hour

    North Carolina's Barrier Islands: Wonders of Sand, Sea, and Sky

    By David Blevins

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    In this stunning book, nature photographer and ecologist David Blevins offers an inspiring visual journey to North Carolina's barrier islands as you have never seen them before. These islands are unique and ever-changing places with epic origins, surprising plants and animals, and an uncertain future. From snow geese midflight to breathtaking vistas along otherworldly dunes, Blevins has captured the incredible natural diversity of North Carolina's coast in singular detail. His photographs and words reveal the natural character of these islands, the forces that shape them, and the sense of wonder they inspire.

    Featuring over 150 full-color images from Currituck Banks, the Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores, and the islands of the southern coast, North Carolina's Barrier Islands is not only a collection of beautiful images of landscapes, plants, and animals but also an appeal for their conservation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe University of North Carolina Press
    Release dateFeb 8, 2017
    ISBN9781469632506
    North Carolina's Barrier Islands: Wonders of Sand, Sea, and Sky
    Author

    David Blevins

    David Blevins is a nature photographer and forest ecologist whose other books include North Carolina's Barrier Islands

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      Book preview

      North Carolina's Barrier Islands - David Blevins

      North Carolina’s Barrier Islands

      NORTH CAROLINA’S BARRIER ISLANDS: WONDERS of SAND, SEA, and SKY

      DAVID BLEVINS

      THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

      Chapel Hill

      This book was published with the assistance of the Blythe Family Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.

      © 2017 David Blevins

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in China

      Designed and set by Kimberly Bryant in Miller

      The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

      Jacket photographs by David Blevins

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Blevins, David, 1967– author.

      Title: North Carolina’s barrier islands : wonders of sand, sea, and sky / David Blevins.

      Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2017] | Includes index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2016036379| ISBN 9781469632490 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469632506 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Barrier islands—North Carolina—Pictorial works. | Outer Banks (N.C.)—Pictorial works. | Natural areas—North Carolina—Pictorial works. | National parks and reserves—North Carolina—Pictorial works.

      Classification: LCC F262.A84 B55 2017 | DDC 975.6/1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036379

      For Leandra

      In this universe of impermanence and wonder, it is my joy to share this brief existence with you.

      CONTENTS

      PREFACE

      CURRITUCK BANKS

      CAPE HATTERAS NATIONAL SEASHORE

      CAPE LOOKOUT NATIONAL SEASHORE

      THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS

      EPILOGUE

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      INDEX

      In an ocean wave the invisible forces of nature are made visible. A beach moves toward the form the water is striving to give it. On these islands of constant change, crashing waves are eternal.

      PREFACE

      The roar of a crashing wave echoes the impermanence of all things. In the autumn, golden sea oats remind us that the prosperous must decline. A dune does not endure; it is as dust before the wind. Few places on earth are as impermanent as a barrier island, and few places resist as forcibly our attempts to possess them. In a single storm, an island may be split in two, or two islands may become one. Over time, islands can rise out of the surf, or collapse beneath a rising sea. This transience teaches us to love barrier islands for the beauty of their natural rhythms rather than become attached to any particular current state.

      We call them barrier islands because they offer the marshes, sounds, and mainland shores that lie behind them some measure of protection from the full force of stormy seas. Their ability to absorb storm energy is connected with their capacity to change, always moving toward, but never reaching, an equilibrium with the forces of wind and water, which are themselves always changing.

      Barrier islands occur along many of the world’s coastlines, but only where four essential conditions are met. First, seas must be rising. Barrier islands are pushed toward the retreating mainland by rising seas, but are left stranded on the growing mainland during times of falling seas. Second, there must be a gradually sloping continental shelf, gradual enough to allow the movement of the islands to keep pace with the rate of rising seas. Third, there must be a supply of sand. And fourth, there must be sufficient wave energy to move the sand.

      The chain of barrier islands off the eastern and southern coasts of the United States is the world’s most extensive, protecting mainland shores from New England to Mexico. Off the coast of North Carolina this island chain reaches its greatest expression. Here these low, narrow, sandy islands veer from the shape of the mainland shore and reach farther out to sea than any other barrier islands on Earth, around twenty-five miles from the mainland near Cape Hatteras. Between the islands and the mainland are broad shallow sounds, open to the sea only at a few narrow and constantly changing inlets. South of Cape Lookout the islands return to hugging the curve of the mainland, separated by narrow salt marshes, tidal creeks, and drowned river estuaries.

      North Carolina’s barrier islands protect its entire coastline, from Currituck Banks on the border with Virginia, around three capes, down to Bird Island on the border with South Carolina. Much of the natural and unique character of these islands has been altered by human development; we modern humans do not share our world as well as our fellow creatures do. But natural areas have been set aside all along the coast, from small remnant natural areas on developed islands, to long stretches of undeveloped beaches on the two National Seashores.

      In this book, we will visit the best remaining natural areas on North Carolina’s barrier islands, moving from north to south like the migration of the sand, looking for the island’s natural wonders, and searching for what makes each island unique and beautiful. But the wonders we find along the way are only the inspiration for beauty. It is the act of appreciation that creates beauty in each mind.

      North Carolina’s Barrier Islands

      A pair of sanderlings probe the wet sand for invertebrates, mirroring a timeless scene that stretches back long before Currituck Banks existed.

      CURRITUCK BANKS

      Standing on the beach on Currituck Banks, breathing in the salt air, watching the mesmerizing surf roll in and slide out, it is easy to feel a sense of timelessness. With civilization behind you, out of sight and mind, and the beach and ocean filling your senses, it can seem as if things were always this way. In some sense this feeling is true: the sea and land must meet somewhere, and the sights and sounds of the shore persist, as each wave rolls in and out over seconds, as the tides ebb and flow over hours, and as the seas rise and fall across the ages. But one of the greatest wonders of barrier islands is that they are not permanent. They are rare and fleeting places in the long history of the Earth. Their capacity to move as they adapt to

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