Three Days in North Carolina's Outer Banks

   It’s a bright late morning in early fall and I’m packed in a large open-air Hummer with fourteen or so sightseers. This is a real safari, complete with a little man driver in an Australian bush hat who looks a little bit like a character out of Monty Python. What can be better? The Corolla (North Carolina) Wild Horse Tour guide promises not to do too much talking as he drives the Hummer along the northern most tip of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. These horses—wild Colonial Spanish Mustangs-- are the descendents of a herd brought here in the 1520s, and as such they are a protected, living treasure besides being the state horse of North Carolina.  

   Elbow-to- elbow in the Hummer, we race along the vast stretch of Corolla beach in search of the ferals. “I can’t promise you’ll see a horse,” our guide says, “Sometimes they go off and hide. They may be grazing somewhere. So, no promises…. And you don’t get your money back if we don’t spot any!”  A little comedy goes a long way though most of the paying tourists want to see something besides seagulls.

  Although we were constantly told not to expect to see any horses, in the end we were wildly—horsefully-- successful. The military style Hummer had barely gotten onto the beach, when we spotted a swaggering stallion: elegant, muscled, tail swaying triumphantly as his harem of 13 “wives” followed behind him in a single file line like brainwashed Stepford Wives, only in this case there’s no brainwashing at all just Mother Nature being Mother Nature (which is to say, politically incorrect) because, obviously, feminism has yet to hit the animal kingdom. The fact is, the stallion’s personal harem doesn’t have to stay put at 13 but can continue to grow as the stallion chooses. The only caveat is that he’ll be forced to challenge many other stallions who will want to steal his mares.

       When stallions fight it’s almost never to the death but involves biting and charging. The losing stallion is smart enough to know when to back down although serious injuries can result from these encounters. We were told about a legendary stallion who suffered the loss of an eye in a fight. “Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us,” as Virginia Woolf once said.   

  The Hummer becomes a cornucopia of clicking I Phones and cameras as it stops alongside the horses making their slow trek up the beach. The sight really is beautiful. The horses are headed for the grazing lands and the small fresh water ponds beyond the dunes and near clusters of sea weathered wooden residencies. The horses come to the beach anywhere from fifteen minutes to 3 hours a day, our guide informs us. They stand by the ocean but do not swim or frolic in the waves. They come to the water to get away from the stinging flies in the grasslands. A thousand bites from flies can result in a severe body itch, so to alleviate themselves from this discomfort the horses will roll around in the sand rather than let the ocean breakers wash them clean.

  So yes, the Hummer tourists are happy because they have seen the light of feral horses. Not only horses, mind you, but uncountable large seagulls and even a few pelicans in a massive cluster that might be a tail feather convention. Nature is happy, but our guide decides we need to see another part of the beach and rams the Hummer’s speed up a notch so that we are pulled into the wind. We bump over small sand dunes so that those of us sitting in the back of the vehicle bounce in the air like paper dolls. Mr. Monty Python is on a mission, so much so that one of the tourists loses his baseball cap. He was warned to hold onto his cap but who can keep rules when surrounded by so much raw nature and uncontrolled polygamy?

   But some rules have to kept, especially when it comes to the horses. We were instructed that no one is to get closer than 50 feet to them. Feeding them will net you a costly fine although we were told that people have attempted everything from braiding their tails to teaching them how to drink beer.

   There was a lot of talk about the dead horses on the Outer Banks’ Cedar Island after Hurricane Dorian hit. During my stay on the Outer Banks I witnessed one person come close to tears when talking about the tragedy.

  A September 25, 2019 AP release stated:

A North Carolina wild horse manager says more than half of one herd is thought to be dead after Hurricane Dorian storm surge slammed their island home. Manager Woody Hancock told the Charlotte Observer that 28 of the 49 horses on Cedar Island, between the Outer Banks and the mainland, are suspected dead.

  Our guide now has the Hummer deep into the grazing grasslands. We see solitary horses wandering among the wooden houses there. Some have been known to walk up to or linger under car ports, while others walk nonchalantly down the middle of sandy unpaved roads, rider less phantoms that seem so out of place in today’s world. We spot a lone horse nudging its way through a clump of bushes looking for a meal of persimmons.

    As we speed up the beach on the return trip—the beach is registered as  US highway 12—we’re informed that the big wooden mansion in front of us was once rented by Taylor Swift. After that we’re told that Tom Cruise once owned the multi-tiered mountain posing as a house (“To your right, ladies and gents”) during the filming of “Risky Business.”

  “Yes, he was inside there jumping around in his underwear,” our guide says, giving us more comedy.  

    The other journalist on this safari was a woman who hailed from Greensboro, North Carolina. After she and I were met at the Northfolk airport by Michelle Ellis, PR Coordinator, Currituck County Travel & Tourism Department, we headed straight to a wine tasting at Sanctuary Vineyards in Jarvisburg, an auspicious beginning to be sure. Of course, when you are assigned to hang out with another writer there are no guarantees that you will get along.

   I very soon decided that we would all be on a harmonious playing field. Michelle, who brought along a valued co-worker for the duration of the trip, was our Uber Mistress/ driver (sans the Australian bush hat). Effortless conversation evolved out of thin air and with three southern accents ‘floating around’ the effect was like a harmonious little Currituck symphony to go along with the waves on the beach. 

  As for that wine tasting, I liked it when the Greensboro writer kept pushing for another tap of Sanctuary’s Coastal Collage 2017, a red blend, or having another go at Aglianico 2017, an explosion of cedar, pomegranate, dried cherry and ripe fruit preserves. We were both rewarded for all our hard work with keepsake quality big red glasses.

Thom Nickels

Contributing Editor