Outer Banks Part I. Being in the company of people, turns out, is not always terrible.

Kerri and I took a lot of bad selfies on the beach.

Now enter vacation.

Let me preface this by saying I hadn’t taken more than a three or four day break from work since August 2017. Yes, I got laid off eight months ago, but that actually meant I had to start finding gigs, which is a job in and of itself, and working even more hours (freelancing does not pay very well) to sustain myself.

So back to present day. On Sunday, after a late night with an old drinking buddy from college, I made my way to the Atlantic coast to meet my friend Kerri and her family (three of her four kids, her daughter’s boyfriend, one of her son’s friends, and the family dog, Olive—another sweetie that won my heart). A week at Duck, in Outer Banks, never sounded so good. Air conditioning, electricity, a kitchen. Hell, a roof. Not to mention, as I’d learn, such a wonderful group of people.

When I arrived, everyone was already making the beach home their home and cooking a dinner of sausage dogs and baked beans, inviting me to sit out on the deck for dinner. They made dinner and ate together every night, something that seemed so foreign to me. I wanted to offer to cook, but everything I thought of was a one-person dish. I realized I don’t know the first thing about how to cook for a group of people. This, and just being among them, really got me thinking about families, the idea of family, the idea of companionship. I’ve been so fiercely steering this ship as my own captain, I’d forgotten that it’s pretty nice to be in the company of other people—to laugh together, eat together, drink together. It was oddly … nice.

Part of my backstory that is relevant here is the fact that for more than a decade, I’ve not been much of a drinker. Once or twice a year—Christmas, maybe, or when a friend visits from out of town or some douchebag breaks my heart (just kidding; I don’t date douchebags)—I throw back a few. Truthfully, it’s quite often more than a few when it happens. And something about this sea-salt air, combined with a family who likes to throw back a whole lot, put me in the uncharacteristic spirit to start drinking. Every day. It was like my own personal chapter of Rum Diaries, except mine entailed gin and scotch. And, curiously, the drinking didn’t seem to faze me (except for the night I puked in the ocean).

Kerri rose before all of us each morning, busying herself with cleaning the kitchen, making breakfast, taking a run along the beach, followed by yoga on the porch. Come afternoon, she was seldom without a glass of wine in hand. And by 7, she was usually done for the night. Nighttime Kerri retires by 8 or 9, leaving me, who typically stays up until 12 or 1, to either do things like write postcards or hang out with all the kids wandering around the beach house drinking and playing beer pong and rapping along to top 40.

I felt a little out of place (what else is new) but chose the latter. This led to mostly hanging out with her son Seth and his friend Will, the two who always seemed to stay up the latest—and were always up for just about anything. Most of that entailed drinking and wandering onto the beach each night, just taking in the moon and the tides and vastness of it all. And Will’s penchant for catching sand crabs and identifying their gender. We often went to bed at an ungodly hour (ungodly for me, anyway)—2, 3, 4, after 4. As Will put it, “We are definitely the rockstars of this vacation.” (The rockstars were passed out on couches at 9 a.m. Sunday morning, when everyone else had cleaned, packed, and hit the road for the long drive home.)

All of this is to say that I felt lucky to spend some real, actual, legitimate downtime with Kerri (she’s sincerely one of my favorite people, hands down), but I was also pleasantly surprised to make some new friends.

I’ve always needed a lot of time alone, which has grown over the years, maybe to a point of severity that I hunt realized, a ship blown too far offshore from a strong gust of wind. I’ve lived alone, vacationed alone, gone to movies and restaurants alone for most of my adult life, mostly by preference. But in this short week (too short), I’ve enjoyed other people’s company again in a way that I hadn’t for a long time, maybe since high school. Maybe it’s something about the genuine closeness and spirit of this family and the way they made me feel, if only for a week, that I was one of them. But it’s had me missing them already and suddenly not as gung ho as I had been about journeying across America solo.

“Vacations change things,” Kerri said. “Don’t they?”

They do.

It’s as if we get a moment out of time to reflect and exhale and be exactly who we’ve wanted to be but were too caught up in the minutiae to totally surrender to it. Vacations put our lives into perspective like anything that gives us another vantage point to consider ... or maybe a few.

Interlude: Beliefs we live by

How many people do we become—even if we remain, in essence, ourselves? How many versions of ourselves exist? Is it infinite? Tapping into, revising, revisiting, coming into … who I am in the mountains, who I am at the beach, who I am with you. My headspace and my heart changes with the landscape. I’m always meeting people because of my work but never really spending time with them, never really going all that deep. (Just because I don’t say it, doesn't mean I don’t see it—but years can have a way of closing you off, and I wish I knew how to undo that … or, rather, redo.)

At least whether I die tomorrow or in another 50 years, I can say I’ve lived. I don’t mean I’ve gotten drunk and high and gotten into wild misadventures, though there was that. I mean I’ve loved, over and over again. I’ve had my heart broken and have watched it grow back together, so that I can fall in love all over again. I’ve prayed hard, and I’ve heard those subtle, solid responses that leave no trace of doubt. I’ve traveled long roads on my own, driving from Maryland to Maine, Florida, California and back, under sun and stars. Just me and g-d and the whole universe and everyone I hold dear, all of it inside me. I’ve been honest, because I can't imagine being anything else. I’ve been sick, in hospitals, vulnerable and thinking about my own mortality much too young, although I’d been thinking about it anyway.

I’ve (mostly) given up trying to make sense of everything.

I believe in divine timing. I believe that the ocean makes everything right. I believe in the human experience. I believe in the power of a good night’s sleep. I believe in people. I believe in love. My manifesto is simple.

This patch of earth

This campsite was a little more remote than I'd realized, but so beautiful.

After 18 months of living in Baltimore, it's felt good to get back to the earth—let my toes sink into the grass and dirt, rooted; look around me as I wind my way through these profound mountain roads; exhale deeply each time I find myself inside of another peaceful sunset after I’ve settled for the night, letting it fill me.

By the time I arrived at the campsite near Weaverville, North Carolina, last night, it was nearly dusk—just enough time to see the grounds, find a place to camp, and set up my tent. It was a lot more remote than I’d realized. Unimaginable beauty but remote (the two, obviously, go hand in hand).

The gravel, uphill road that led here was unexpected. I felt as if my car might fall apart as it bounced and bumped its way to the top—or simply not be able to make the climb, as the odometer dropped from 7 miles per hour to 5 to 4, as I pressed on the gas pedal.

Once there, a small path led me from the “parking lot” to the camping area in a small meadow among the mountains, where there was an open-air kitchen with a refrigerator, sink, and a stove (though I couldn’t figure out how to work it); a wooden platform designated as a yoga deck (complete with a goddess statue); a compost toilet outhouse, which was actually adorable; and the cutest hobbit house ever, a cob house with a grass roof that the owners have been working on.

As I looked around the property, I spotted an animal, solid black, hop into the tall grass—which was as high as my waist, at least. I didn’t get a good enough look at it, but what could it have been, if not a bear cub?

I mused over it, bear mace in pocket, as I set up my big tent quickly, made dinner, and then got in my tent just as the sky went dark. The tent provides the illusion of safety, at the very least. There’s something about stepping out into total darkness, alone, to pee in the night, that is unnerving. With a little headlamp on, all you could really see is an animal when it’s about five feet in front of you, i.e., when it’s too late for you to do much of anything.

So I arranged my bedding, changed my clothes, got cozy, and then very quickly realized that the tent was problematic for another reason: I’d decided, in a rush, to forego staking it, thinking that a tent seldom needs stakes when it's weighed down by me and all my things. Not so. The winds got so strong after dark, I genuinely wondered if it were scientifically possible for the tent to lift off of the ground and carry me through the air with it, like some cartoon.

They hadn’t called for a storm, and I didn’t remember the winds being particularly strong earlier in the day in Asheville, but nonetheless, there was something about that area, as if the wind just swirls around that little mountain cove each night.

I listened to it move through the trees, going from ridge to ridge, while I lied in my tent. And then I sat up rigidly and braced myself each time that I suspected it was about to come billowing through, centering myself in the middle of the tent, watching as its walls got blown inward, shrinking deeper and deeper toward the tent's center—me—until all walls were practically touching.

I finally decided I needed to stake the thing, even if it meant being out in the crazy winds in the darkness, at the mercy of the night and its beasts, wherever they are. After doing that, I was a little calmer, though the winds still sounded as if they could rip the tent from its stakes or snap one of the poles that were holding up my little home. Finally, I was able to fall asleep. The winds, loudly flapping my tent, woke me up again and again throughout the night, each time leaving me wondering whether my tent would be destroyed and end in a heap of nylon mess just lying on top of me in my sleeping bag.

But in between the anxieties that come with traveling alone, there are moments. Moments of great beauty. The sky turning peach and pink before exiting into total blackness. The fireflies flickering against the rolling, tree-covered hillsides. And morning, when the tent becomes perfectly still. It's quiet now, but a multitude of birds.