Ocracoke Story Week

 This last week has been a very busy one as it has been the time for Ocracoke Storytelling Week.

In 1998 we started the first Ocracoke Storytelling Weeks and through the following years held 46 weekly workshops until COVID brought them to a halt for 2020.  After that year off, Trish and I were eager to get started back again this year.

Instead of two weeks, we decided that the thing to plan for (there was still COVID uncertainty at our planning time) a single week this year.  We contacted the people who had planned to come the year before and were cancelled and soon filled the week with nineteen participants.

Getting ready for music from Martin, Lou, Marcy and Dallas in Lou and Marcy’s yard.

This year we moved to a new meeting house called Sounds Perfect, a great location with splendid views of the Pamlico Sound.  It was a wonderful week with not only workshop time but occasions for two public performances, one at the Preservation Society Museum and the other at the stage beside Books to be Red.  We had excellent audiences at both.

Sometimes our days seemed centered around food as we ate at at five different restaurants in addition to being catered by Eduardo our opening night and a cookout at our house on our closing night.  Our meal times are actually learning times as we exchange stories nonstop through all our eating.

At the Museum performance.

Next year we plan to return to two weeks and look forward to being back on our normal schedule.

OcraFolk Festival

 For nineteen years the OcraFolk Storytelling and Music Festival was held on the island the first full weekend in June.  Then came COVID.  Last year the festival was cancelled and we had to miss each other for that weekend.  This year the festival came back to life.

The 21st Year was moved from the traditional sites on Howard Street and Schoolhouse Road to the Berkeley Center grounds where crowd size and containment could be planned for and controlled.

Telling on the Barn Stage. 85 degrees and humid!

There were two main performance stages: the Golden Stage and the Barn Stage.  The Barn Stage was set up on the porch of the Berkeley Center barn and chairs filled the lawn in front.  The Golden Stage was under twin tents in the front yard of the Center itself.  The Golden Stage was named in memory of John Golden, both a performer and a stage host at the festival throughout its history and a favorite friend and performer in Ocracoke’s total music world.  We miss John terribly following his death during the past year.

On the Golden Stage.

The original plans, put together when gatherings were much more restricted under COVID regulations got to be relaxed a bit and we were able to both move and associate more freely under recently revised regulations and recommendations.  There was a palpable joy in the air as people got to be together in a setting of music and stories for the first time in the island in two years!

Birthday Trip

 When we left the SWAG, Trish and I drove up to Lake Orion, Michigan.  Lake Orion is the town to which her family moved when her father, Ralph, retired from the Navy in 1966.

The purpose of this trip was not just for a visit home, but, to pick up her mother, Betty, for her first trip to Ocracoke Island.

On Tuesday the car was loaded and we started the two-day drive home.  Tuesday was also my birthday, and, getting to bring Betty home with us I considered to be my first birthday present of the year.

After two days and eight hundred miles in the car, we arrived at the Swan Quarter Ferry.  Except for a short passenger ferry ride to Mackinac Island, this was Betty’s first real ferry ride.  

After three hours on the ferry, we arrived on the island and gave her the full tour of both the island and our little home here.  

The following day was HER birthday. She is now 92 years old. I had arranged for pineapples from Hawaii to arrive in this day, and they did!  Now we are all set for many treats.

She will be with us until July 7 and then will have a visit with Trish’s daughter, Betsie, in Roanoke, Virginia.  After that we will all have many stories for weeks and maybe years to come!

Hikes Continue

 Each day here at the Swag we continue to lead hikes.  There are very civilized places to walk on the Swag property and other places that are deep in the woods.

Yesterday our hike took us to a splashing waterfall near the bottom of Swag property.  This was a hike of some difficulty as we climbed down by ropes to the base of the waterfall itself.

On our way back we saw one of the more than thirty species of salamander to be found in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  It was a small Eastern Red Spotted Newt. 

There is an adventure around every corner when we go out on the trail here.

Back at The Swag

 This week Trish and I are back at The Swag, the beautiful country inn outside my home town of Waynesville where I tell stories and we lead hikes two or three weeks each year.

The Swag property abuts the Great Smoky National Park boundary along the Cataloochee Divide and the Cataloochee Divide trail just inside the Park is a trail that I started hiking about sixty-five years ago.  The trail goes through a wonderland of trees and wildflowers and each day’s hike is filled with beautiful natural discoveries.

Most of the trilliums have finished blooming by now, but we discovered a whole hillside filled with the late-blooming Vesey’s Trillium on our first hike.

Later on we came across this lovely and rare pink lady slipper wild orchid.  Some of our hikers sometimes ask me whether I took all of this beauty for granted growing up here.  No...in all of my childhood and growing years I was never anything but amazed at the beauty and wonder of these mountains.  This is perhaps because my parents so loved, appreciated, and taught me about so many of the things that surrounded my childhood.

I learned early on that individual people may own the land, but we all own the landscape forever!

Cemetery Project

 The cemetery for Davis Chapel Methodist Church is on land donated by my great grandfather at the same time when he donated land for the church.  This was in about 1865.  The church is now gone, but the cemetery continues to be cared for by the community and is the final resting place for many of my ancestors.

On a recent trip Trish and I discovered how very much the Davis tombstones needed to be cleaned.  There is a lot of lichen growth and other biological signs of aging. So, on this trip, we began that process.

A lot of time was spend working on the stone marking the grave of my Daddy’s baby sister, Ruth.  Ruth was a student at Berea College when she died of a brain tumor in 1932.  Daddy remembered her as a magical girl who could collect the honey from the bees without using smoke or ever being stung.  She was said to be one with nature itself.

We also worked on the marker for my great-great-grandfather, Philip Davis.  

This is a project that will continue for quite a while.  We discovered both how much work is involved and how we need some different materials to use. We need to find a way to take water to the cemetery to do this work effectively and seriously.  It is a dear privilege of love to be able to do this and remember those who gave us our lives.

Loquat Time

 A number of years ago I went into the old Ocracoke Trading Company and saw a small plant for sale in a number ten can.  Foy Shaw was working there and he told me that it was called a loquat tree and that’s all he knew about it.  

I bought it and set it out in the side yard.  Now the tree is at least thirty feet tall and each year bears an abundance of yellow fruit after it after it blooms in the winter.  I had never done anything with these fruit, but, Trish decided this year it was time to explore the possibilities of the loquat.

Native to Southeast Asia, the loquat is cultivated there for both its fruit and its leaves which are used for making a kind of tea.  It also grows in Gulf Coast states and up the East Coast to South Carolina.  Ours just happens to like Ocracoke and thrives here.

After finding recipes for loquat jam, we headed outside to pick the loquats.  Trish did the picking and I was the ladder holder.  She got pretty high up into the tree and for a nice bucket full of the yellow fruits.

Then it was to the kitchen to take out the large triple seeds and then cook them down on the way to making the preserve.

She added cardamom as well as sugar and finally filled the jars and processed the jam.

The taste is described as a cross between peach and mango.  I would agree with that with a tiny edge of citrus.  The cardamom is the perfect spice addition.

I think that  next year we will be looking for harvest time and do this again.