Winterspring Fog As spring approaches, the curtain lifts
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Story & Photograph By Virginia Holman
hen my family moved to Carolina Beach over a decade ago, I noticed something a bit odd: The weather on the island was different from the weather just over the bridge. Say it was raining torrents in Wilmington when I left work: ditches aswirl with grass clippings and Styrofoam debris, thunder and lightning cracking, car wipers tick-ticking at top speed. As soon as I reached Snow’s Cut Bridge, the roar of rain on the roof silenced abruptly. Those days, I felt as if I’d moved to a balmy paradise made of blue skies and sun. Then winter arrived. Not our current unseasonably warm winter, but the real deal: You know, school-closed-for-snowflurries, scrape-the-windshield-with-a-library-card Southern winter.
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Salt •
MARCH 2020
Our first few winters on the island were tough, and not just because the tourists were gone and seasonal businesses shuttered. A brisk winter’s day inland feels much colder and sharper at the coast. Cold fronts on the island bring eave-rattling north winds. Even my closed windows shudder and hum; once my neighbor’s unlatched storm door was pulled open so violently that the hinges bent and the glass shattered. Simple pleasures like a beach walk are bone-chilling, sand-stinging adventures when the winter wind is howling. Even so, my neighbors and I joke about it: “Rather have a sunny day that’s 40 degrees than a cloudy one that’s 60.” “If it doesn’t get cold, the skeeters don’t die.” “It’s the price of living in paradise.”
THE ART & SOUL OF WILMINGTON
