This clothesline was in the yard of an shuttered-up house on Ocracoke Island. The house (and the clothesline) belonged to a couple who had retired to Ocracoke--she died in 1994 and he in 1997, and they are buried there on a hill at the edge of this property. A utility worker I ran into while I was snooping around said the family still owns the property but doesn't use it.



For some reason, I failed to take a picture of the house, but I did get one of this shed:

 

 It's all very lush and beautiful and vaguely spooky. There was a screened porch that wasn't boarded up, and I wanted to go press my nose against the screen and see what I could see, but I was too afraid that a face would pop up in front of me and scare me to death, so I didn't.

I like hidden away places. I like secret paths. I like knowing only half the story. When I got home, I looked up the couple and learned a little bit more about them (he worked for the State department and was an assistant dean at Yale Law School, for instance, and neither of them were from North Carolina), but I didn't learn anything real about them. I guess in a way I already knew a few real things--that even though they weren't from Ocracoke, they loved it enough to retire there and be buried there. I don't know if I want to know a whole lot more.

***

What have we done today? Will worked out with the school baseball team this morning. I don't know why they're working out this summer, except maybe to build team cohesion or something, since they don't play fall ball. Maybe they just wanted to make sure Will got some exercise.

Jack? I don't know what Jack does. He's supposed to get some exercise, but to my knowledge he's had none since we got back from the beach. I will begin my nagging anon.

I wrote a bit and watched it rain and went to Whole Foods and walked Travis and made dinner and did laundry ... Just a regular day in the life. Tomorrow: yoga! Really. I mean it.