A little birthday sketch by the sea.

“The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”

– Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Although I’m a born-and-bred Virginian (and quite proud to be one), if you were to ask me about some of my earliest memories in life, we’d have no choice but to venture one state south – to the Atlantic Coast of North Carolina, and a 200-mile-long region known as the Outer Banks.

As I ran a few errands around my hometown yesterday, I was thinking about how I wanted to describe the Outer Banks to you. The image that first came to mind was of a set of Russian nesting dolls, for it’s the kind of place you get to know in layers. The Outer Banks is the name for the region as a whole, but as you move down the coast, you meet the microcosms that exist within it – from Corolla to Kitty Hawk, from Nags Head to Hatteras Island, and finally to Ocracoke Island, which can be reached only by ferry.

At the time I was born, my paternal grandparents lived in Kill Devil Hills, mere minutes from the Wright Brothers National Memorial, and I went to stay with them often – sometimes with my parents, and sometimes on my own (as a three year old, these solo adventures were thrilling). I can still remember standing on their dock overlooking Collington Creek as my grandfather pulled up rusted crab pots. I remember their spindly legs, and the crab cakes my grandmother made, and the visits to places like Jockey’s Ridge State Park – the tallest sand dune system in the eastern United States.

But what I remember the most is my dad. He seemed to come alive in the Outer Banks – throwing tennis balls into the surf for our dog Luke to retrieve; running into the waves with his neon yellow surfboard in the crook of his arm; teaching my siblings and me how to bodyboard and play paddle ball and the fine art of sunning your skin without scorching it in the process. More than anything, my dad has passed down his love for the ocean to us – as tangible an inheritance I could ever hope for.

So it makes sense that this past Sunday, which happened to be Father’s Day here in the US, my parents and I decided to take a short daytrip down across the border. We didn’t make it as far south as Nags Head or Hatteras this time, but settled on the beach at Kitty Hawk.

And perhaps it’s why today, which also happens to be my 28th birthday, that I thought I would share a few photos here from our past and present visits to the Outer Banks. My head is always filled with a thousand plans and possibilities for the future, but as I dug my feet into the sand on Sunday and began to sketch a place I’ve been calling home for nearly three decades now, I felt my mind grow still.

I can’t wait to see where this new year leads – but for now, I’m soaking up the summer sun and hope you’ll join me in celebrating wherever life happens to find us today.

The Outer Banks, circa 1988…

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…and Kitty Hawk, today.