Met up with some old friends last weekend in Beaufort, North Carolina. Bucky and Maggie live in Boone; Jennifer and David drove in from their place near Dillwyn, VA. I flew in from Baton Rouge. Once we unloaded at our Airbnb house on Gordon Street, we quickly reassembled at the Mill Whistle Brewery nearby. There were cleverly named sours and stouts and IPA’s and hefeweizens, but for me the entire trip was immediately justified by their Gas Can Red Ale. Red and brown ales are both getting harder and harder to find in Baton Rouge amidst the Citra hops IPA craze. There’s the Red Stallion brewed and served at Crescent City Brewing on Decatur in New Orleans, and in November a keg or two of Bell’s Best Brown Ale made it to Mid City Beer Garden and The Chimes, but it is rare to see even Killian’s or Newcastle listed locally. Anyway, beer flowed, there was talk of fishing and birding and ceramics and masonry and cooking and family all while watching loons race across the sky as the sun sank before we headed back to 118 Gordon and threw together an impromptu cocktail dinner. We started with the Asian cured salmon Bucky had made at his house in Boone and brought with him to Beaufort. He laid the salmon over lemon drenched Honeycrisp slices and topped it off with fresh chopped cilantro. We also scored some ridiculously sweet and salty local oysters on the way into town and opened some on the porch and popped the rest in the oven with just a bit of butter and shallots and Parmesan. We threw clams in a pot with a stick of butter and a cup of white wine and let them steam open as well, talking and laughing the whole time. As the weekend wore on we discovered literal treasure at the Queen Anne’s Revenge exhibit in the maritime museum, spotted wild horses on Carrot Island across Taylor Creek from Fisherman’s Park at the end of Gordon, and walked a long stretch of Atlantic beach rich with shell scree and brown pelicans and hundreds of gulls and terns. There were gale force warnings Sunday that shut down our planned fishing trip, but as I sat on the porch swing watching the loons and pelicans scoot away in the steady breeze, getting ready for the always slightly sad clean up, pack up, hugs, handshakes, kisses goodbye and This was great, Let’s do this again, So good to see you I knew we had all won in a way, one of those short, sweet victories that light up your life, at least for the moment. That feeling of this is what I want to be doing, right here, right now that we all wish was more frequent. We visit, we cook, we learn, we listen, all the while hunting for all the love and laughter we can find on this earth. Beaufort, North Carolina is an excellent place to get together with friends. And the oysters were magnificent.
