American Accents and Camo Fashion in Belhaven, NC

Alligator River to Belhaven– 50 nautical miles sailed, 3 bridges

Strangely, my beautiful wife was awake with me at 5am as the strong winds continued to thrash our boat as they had been all night. She is a creature of the night so my early to rise and early to bed routine really doesn’t work for her. Maybe it’s a good thing as she gets plenty of alone time at night to communicate with the kids, watch tv, read, research stuff (which I’ve heard leads to mindless doomscrolling), review her fashion inventory, and she’s even been known to clean closets into the early morning hours as I sleep soundly. Me, on the other hand, I’m regularly up hours before her leading my own private life which includes writing, banking, administration, research on boat stuff, but primarily writing, which can resemble doomscrolling when I’m really into it.

 

What Ana was working on was a plan for tomorrow and Friday as there was a big storm coming and we didn’t want to get caught with nowhere to hide. She researched all the available options and put in a booking reservation through Dockwa, an online platform for marina slips, for Thursday and Friday nights at Belhaven Marina. We’d have to wait for the marina to confirm the reservation, but at least we had a plan.

 

As soon as it was light we pulled anchor and got underway dodging crab pots again as we started south down the Alligator River. A massive 2.5 mile long bridge spans the river and we lucked out with the operator as he held the swing bridge open for us to pass behind several vessels that were a few minutes ahead of us. That was really the only excitement for the day as we navigated the rest of the river with our headsail up and 20 knot north winds pushing us along, then followed the ICW through a 23 mile long narrow canal, passed through a couple of larger bays, then found ourselves at the town of Belhaven by 2:30 with a fine spot in the sizeable and decently protected anchorage.

 

We gathered up our garbage, grabbed our shopping roller cart (which our friend Kate affectionately calls “the mini van”) and took the dinghy into the town dock. There was one main street in downtown with a series of interesting shops - a serious looking steak house, gourmet coffee shop, clothing stores, and two places that looked to be large event spaces, with fancy tables and chairs, but nobody inside. Ana ordered a latte to go at the coffee shop and then browsed the fashions at the attached clothing store while I sat on the spongy green couch and read a North Carolina tourism magazine. This is one state I really know nothing about. Not a single thing comes to mind when I think about North Carolina. Even after browsing the magazine I’m still not sure what this state is about. But we have noticed one thing here. The accent. It’s changed.

The US has a far broader range of accents than Canada and probably the rest of our Commonwealth brothers and sisters. Until recently, the accents of the people we’ve met have been similar. You can sense a little American twang in them, but they are not that different. As Ana and I were walking through Belhaven towards the commercial area, a lady in an oncoming car slowed down, lowered her window and said, “Y’all need a raaaaahd?” We politely declined, explaining we were enjoying the walk, but her accent was wild. Same as the lady working in the marine store we stopped into, real Southern-like, and super friendly. We also stopped at the Dollar General and found deals on cheese and snacks, and the two cashiers were rocking it hard in the local dialect.

 

Another observation here. Most of the men we’ve seen are wearing camo, and one was carrying a rifle in a case. Now they didn’t have that brown and black grease paint on their faces and weren’t doing the prone army crawl, dragging themselves around by their forearms and elbows, but they did all look to be on their way to shoot animals in the face. In the marine store I noticed a Yamaha outboard engine that had a brown cowling (cover). I mentioned to the nice lady that I’d never seen a brown outboard before.

 

“It’s for hunners,” she said, smiling.

 

“Hunners?” I said.

 

“Shore, duck hunners and the laaahk. Birds cain’t see em.”

 

As we walked the highway towards the Food Lion grocery store we noticed little wads of cotton stuck to the grass and blowing around on the road.

 

“Must have been a couch explosion here somewhere,” I surmised.

 

“Maybe a road rage incident, but they used pillows instead of Glocks to sort it out,” Ana guessed.

 

“You’d almost think there was a cotton field around here,” I laughed. Then we both looked up…and saw a cotton field.

 

Neither of us had ever seen one before. And it was beautiful. Millions of fluffy white cotton balls balanced atop black stems. It was artful, and a delight to see. We walked right into the field and I plucked a cotton ball. It was so lovely, I felt like sticking some in my ears. I pocketed my new treasure and we continued onto the grocery store, where we picked up a few things, then walked back through the darkness with our full buggy, enjoying the quiet and still evening vibe of Belhaven.