Salt in the Sand

The Backstory

I wrote this one sitting still in the truck watching the line of taillights crawl back over the bridge. Sunday evening. Same as a hundred others. The weekenders were headed out. Coolers empty. Kids sunburned. Sand in the floorboards. They'd had their turn with the island and now they were giving it back. I remember smiling at that long red snake on 58, then feeling bad for smiling, because truth is we need them. Always have. But once they start heading out, the whole island exhales. You can feel it in your chest if you've lived there long enough.

I was looking out at Bogue Banks the way a man looks at the face of somebody he loves and knows he can't keep. That was the whole thing. Not anger. Not pride exactly. Just that old mix of gratitude and grief. We call them dry-tiders because they come over dry and leave salty, and most of them mean no harm. Some are good folks. Some even get it. But the people who stay, who board up for Bertha, who gut wet sheetrock after Florence, who know what September smells like before the weather man does, they're made of a different thing. I got to thinking we ought to have a name for ourselves too. Not fancy. Just true. That's where Drytiders came from. A little joke first. Then it wasn't a joke.

Once I had that, the rest of the song showed up honest. Coast Guard Road. The Point. Fort Macon. Winter beaches wide and empty like the Lord swept the room clean. Neighbors that don't ask if you need help, they just grab a shovel. That's the part people miss when they write songs about the coast. They get the sunsets right and still miss the place. This island isn't pretty because it's easy. It's pretty because it keeps getting worked over and stays itself anyway. Or tries to.

So "Salt in the Sand" wasn't really me trying to say something grand. It was me trying to get one feeling down before I lost it. The feeling that a place can get inside your blood. That you can belong to a strip of sand the same way you belong to your own scars. And that even knowing it slips a little more every year, you love it enough to wish, just for a second, you could hold the tide still. That's no kind of plan. But a lot of true things ain't. The name stuck. The song stayed. And the island kept being the island.

- Echo Thatch (2020 - Bogue Banks, NC)