Memorial Day weekend threatened rain, but on Oak Island, a barrier island of North Carolina, the days were gorgeous. I had spent Saturday with girlfriends on the beach and on Sunday McCrae came down to join me. It had rained torrentially the night before - the remnants of a tropical storm moving landward - and the post-storm swells beat hard against the beach at high tide in the afternoon. It looked like great body-surfing conditions, and McCrae and I grinned at each other and took off into the breakers.
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to alarm you, but I just wanted to let you know something very big was swimming near you just over there.”
We were about thigh-high in the surf of Oak Island beach off the North Carolina coast when this woman approached my two bikini-clad friends and me. The woman’s adolescent daughter was body-surfing the small waves in the shallows. The woman was calm, pleasant and non-alarmist, which I appreciated. We thanked her and moved to the shallows where sea and sand swirled around our ankles.
