Dunes, Ocracoke

By Carrie Jacobson

Finally, finally, I have been freed for a vacation!

I left home Friday at noon, and arrived in Cape Hatteras on Saturday. Sunday morning, I took the ferry to Ocracoke Island, and began painting.

This was the first painting I made on Sunday, and while I was making it, I began to understand some things about myself and what attracts me – or at least, what is attracting me on this trip.

You think “Outer Banks” and you think water and waves and beaches – or at least, I do. But on Sunday, I realized that for me, it’s not that. It’s the dunes and the sky.

Beaches and waves I can get in Westerly, R.I., near our Connecticut home.

Dunes – backbones of the earth, raw and rhythmic, dunes are what call me. Long skeins of dunes, under a huge and unbroken sky, these pull at my eye and my heart and all my senses.

I don’t pretend to understand this. But seeing them, and painting them makes me happy. And so, on this narrow, windswept island, I am painting dunes and not questioning my soul.