Sam and I were going on an adventure. Kevin had a training with work in North Carolina, and we were going to tag along. There would be a rental car, and Sam and I would spend a couple of days exploring the nearby town of New Bern and perhaps even a bit of the North Carolina coast, which was only an hour away.
I was looking forward to going on this trip, but when Kevin told me about the wild ponies on an island off the coast of North Carolina, my excitement couldn't be contained. The ponies were believed to be the descendants of ponies that had survived Spanish shipwrecks hundreds of years ago. I pictured one, a beautiful light tan colored one, galloping through the surf. In my mind it looked so exotic, so Spanish. I burst out, "Is the island Chincoteague?" Kevin was not sure, but he thought the island had a different name.
Misty of Chincoteague was a children's book I had read when I was young. I had never been one of those girls who loved to read about horses, but Misty of Chincoteague was a Newberry Award winning children's book, and at one time I had aspired to reading all the Newberry Award winners. I could not remember anything about the book, only that the island of Chincoteague was somewhere off the coast of the eastern United States. I also had a vague mental picture of the book's cover, which of course was of the beautiful, mysterious horse named Misty.
I googled Chincoteague and saw that Chincoteague Island was off the coast of Virginia. What about that? There was more than one of this sort of island. Maybe someday we would tour them all. Kevin did some researching of his own and informed me that the island he was talking about was called Shackleford Banks. We would have to take a ferry to get there. Not only were there wild ponies, but apparently it was also a great place to find sea shells. I adjusted my mental image of Shackleford Island just a tad. This time I saw a cluster of beautiful, wild yet gentle ponies standing in the sand. I was nearby holding an enormous pink tinged conch shell. But wait, where was Sam? I didn't dwell on this minor detail for long. Of course Sam would be with me having just as much fun as I was.
Or would he? Sam has lately been going through a phase where he doesn't want to do things. He says he is scared, or he just wants to stay at home. It doesn't matter if the destination is story time at the library or a play date with a friend or an adventure on an uninhabited island off the coast of North Carolina, he will often say he doesn't want to go.
It wasn't until we were nearing the North Carolina coast on Sunday that reality started to displace my romantic notions. Even though we were in our rental vehicle with the windows rolled up, I could almost feel the ocean breeze and smell the salty air. Kevin and I were in a cheerful mood. Sam, worn out from a big day of traveling, just wanted to go to our hotel. Kevin tried to cheer him up a bit by suggesting to him that he and I might go on a little boat ride tomorrow. "Don't want to go on a boat ride" was the response. "Well, then, Sam, maybe we will go see some wild ponies," I suggested. It was then that Kevin reminded me that we would have to take a boat to see the wild ponies. They were, after all, on an island. "Oh," I sighed. Maybe I was a bit tired, too.
Sam fell asleep in our rental SUV, and I stopped by a visitor center we saw along the way. I learned more about Shackleford Banks. It is uninhabited. There are no restaurants and there are no toilets. You take a ferry there which leaves at certain times of the day. It leaves you there, and you tell the captain when you want it to return to pick you up. Other phrases from the brochure stuck in my mind. Bits about staying fifty feet away from the ponies and bits about "aggressive" stallions. Given the circumstances of Kevin having to work and Sam's present mood and my own nervous disposition, this was starting to seem like more of an adventure than the two of us could handle. Now I could picture us being charged by angry wild ponies or more likely, us wandering around an island looking for ponies in vain and Sam whining about not having energy and wanting to go to the hotel. I pictured the other visitors to Shackleford Island, and Sam and I didn't fit that description either. The moms were no doubt tanned and lean and looked like they belonged in their Keens instead of just wearing them because they were cute and comfortable like I did. They had probably kayaked their own boats there. The kids. What did the kids on Shackleford Island look like? I didn't know, but I doubted they were wanting to go back to their hotels so they could watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
The lady at the visitor center broke these increasingly disturbing musings with information about Carrot Island, which is between Beaufort, North Carolina and Shackleford Banks. She said that some of the wild ponies live there and can actually be seen from Front Street in Beaufort.
With that news we were on our way to Beaufort, and before you knew it we were driving up and down Front Street in Beaufort, my eyes straining to see a pony on Carrot Island. Carrot Island was indeed only a short distance away from Beaufort. It almost looked like you could swim over there. Any moment now I was going to see a pony, I just knew it, and I could get this pony thing out of my system.
We never, however, saw a pony, and we would soon go to our hotel an hour away, and, finally becoming a realist, I did not know if we would make it back on this trip.
That is when, however, Kevin saw the sign for "The Waterbug." "The Waterbug" was a cute little boat along Front Street that actually had a tour of the harbor coming up at 5:30, which was only thirty minutes away. All the other ferrys did not appear to do tours this late in the day on a Sunday. I ran up to the stand and looked at the ad for "The Waterbug." It claimed that the boat would go near Carrot Island, and we might very well see some wild ponies. That was it. We were getting on that boat.
By this time Sam was awake and in a little better mood about not being at our hotel. He still, however, did not want to ride in a boat. "Scared," he said. The lady who sold tickets for the boat and I managed to get Sam to climb aboard to see if we could change his mind. "Want to get off," Sam said. The operators of "The Water Bug" needed four passengers to make the 5:30 trip. They had three middle aged ladies already so they made another attempt to persuade Sam. The captain herself told Sam he could sit in the captain's chair if he got back on the boat. Sam sat in the chair and was delighted, but when he got off the chair, he headed for the dock. Captain Peggy told Sam to just give it a few minutes and think about it. Sam told her he didn't need to think about it. My heart sank. I would not see any wild ponies frolicking along the shore. Then Sam surprised us all. "Don't need to think about it," he said. "I want to ride." We were astounded. "What changed your mind, buddy?" Kevin asked. "Never ridden a boat before," Sam replied.
As we made our way around the harbor, I couldn't help but think what a magical evening this was turning out to be. I was filled with pride over my little boy, who turned out to be so brave after all. The weather was perfect. We had seen some beautiful birds and any moment now we were going to see the ponies. Captain Peggy turned on some music, and of course, it was one of my all time favorite singers, James Taylor, singing "Carolina In My Mind." Captain Peggy pointed in the distance to a clump of trees on nearby Carrot Island. She had already told us that the ponies had been shy today, but I knew privately that they would come out for me. "And there," she said, "you can just make out one of the ponies. "I see it!" exclaimed one of the other women on the boat. I stared and stared, and then I stared some more. We weren't going that fast. I could not see anything that looked alive. We went on a ways more. Sam was as content as he could be. Captain Peggy played "Fire and Rain." She pointed out another pony in the distance. "Man, we are lucky," she said. Except I couldn't see this one either. I tried and tried to make it out. Kevin did, too. He took close up pictures in the direction Captain Peggy indicated hoping that they would reveal a pony.
The boat ride drew to a close. We never saw a pony. Two of the other women on the ride and of course, Captain Peggy, claimed they had. I saw a yacht that had just come in from Boca Raton but no pony. Sam had the right idea. He played with a couple of little plastic cars Captain Peggy loaned him and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the whole experience. I comforted myself with what at the time seemed to be some sort of profound secret truth. My idea was that maybe no one sees a wild pony. Maybe it is just something people want to see so badly that they believe they see it. I know this idea is not true, but I like it anyway.
