Outer Banks, NC

The day after my Pea Island fiasco, I put in at a quiet historical site in the village of Salvo, where the Union tug Fanny was captured in the Civil War, one of the islands' many interesting connections to Colonial and American history. Paddling south into a stiff wind that sent good-sized chop over the bow, I aimed for a distant point of land perhaps a mile away. The shoreline there turned out to have a maze of sheltered inlets, reminiscent of southern swampland rivers. As I nosed in to get out of the wind, long-legged, long-beaked white egrets looked up, assessing me cautiously, then lifting gracefully into the sky as I got closer. One inlet kept narrowing until it ended in a mud bank, and in attempting to turn my long boat around, I got myself hopelessly wedged sideways in marsh grass, forced to resort to a comical rocking and poling effort to avoid stepping out into brown muck to get myself unstuck. Other times the twisting passages narrowed and then broadened again, bringing me unexpectedly back out to the sound. Along the shore, twisted driftwood perched on grassy points, like beautiful pieces of storm-tossed art. Pelicans skimmed the water, as elegant in flight as they are odd and awkward when roosting. Each day offered infinite variations on the themes of birdlife and wind, intriguing shorelines, and ever-changing light.

My home base was a palatial three-story, five-bathroom house right on the beach in Waves, one of a dozen resort communities that have sprung up on the Outer Banks. These dense packs of odd-looking, vertically oriented homes, sandwiched between stretches of National Seashore and elevated on stilts because of hurricane flooding, are an eyesore but a comfortable, convenient, and in the off-season, very cheap place to stay. We could see dolphins playing in the Atlantic waves from our living-room deck and watch the spectacular sunsets; and we had the development blissfully to ourselves.

The southern reaches of the Barrier Islands proved far less developed, with the appealing little villages of Hatteras and Ocracoke, whose historic and colorful character hasn't been swamped by the onslaught of tourism. I took the free 35-minute ferry that connects Hatteras with Ocracoke Island, a sandy, deserted 16-mile-long strip of wild National Seashore that looked especially appealing for a paddle. At the southern tip the land bulges into the sound at Ocracoke Village, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. It has an 1823 lighthouse and a diminutive, pretty harbor surrounded by a warren of pleasant streets. After a tasty lunch at the Creekside Cafe, I unloaded at the public boat ramp and paddled south toward the island's point and the inlet on the Atlantic.

Darting in and out, I saw firsthand startling evidence of why the Outer Banks is graveyard to more than 600 vessels. Heading into a wide bay, I spied what looked like a green canopy far in the distance and, thinking it was an unusual tent site, paddled closer to take a look. It turned out to be a huge navigation buoy, beached far inland by fierce winds and waves that I could hardly imagine.