Last November, my sisters, brother and I gathered in North Carolina to clean out my mother’s town house in Greensboro. The townhouse was recently sold because my mother had moved into a senior living facility. We spent most of three days rummaging through family history. My mother kept all our letters, postcards, pictures and childhood writings. A number of photos were of my father who died in 1984. He joined the military in the 1930s, retired a full colonel in 1964 with a full parade conducted at Fort Bragg to honor his long military career. One of his last posts was as commander of Fort Story, Virginia, a military installation that was used to train soldiers in amphibious landing warfare. Fort Story rests on the sandy shores of the Chesapeake Bay next to Virginia Beach, near the first landing site of the long-suffering Virginia Company colonists in 1607 before they established Jamestown. Our first year of three spent on the post was in a ramshackled ancient beach house next to the two Cape Henry Lighthouses. The oldest dated from 1792 and was the first lighthouse authorized by the U.S. Government and the first federal construction project under the constitution.
The Pope children played among the sand dunes at the foot of the light houses and listened in some apprehension and awe to the deep foghorn from the newest lighthouse as it cast its bright beam seaward during late foggy nights. Our second home on Fort Story was a three story brick house perched next to a seawall that protected the structure from the waves of Chesapeake Bay. We occupied the first two floors and a weather station, with a separate entrance, filled the top third floor. The weathermen came and went somewhat mysteriously, and I cannot remember why we shared this house with them. My father occasionally called up to them inquiring about tomorrow’s weather. On either side of the house, were long deserted sandy beaches. I thought it a great honor to be the first on the beach at the beginning of the day and would often scour the shores in the early morning hours to find any interesting animals or items that washed up during nighttime high tides. Massive aircraft carriers would steam by our house on their way to the giant naval base in Norfolk. My brother and I would wait until they passed and then rush out to body surf the large in-coming waves they created. A pilot ship that provided guides to cargo or naval vessels sailing to Chesapeake Bay ports was posted just off-shore. Pilots in suits, hats and briefcases were carried on the backs of stout seaman through the surf in front of our house to a waiting longboat and then ferried to the offshore pilot ship. One night, the longboat deposited two drunk and confused sailors near our front door. In 1960, we were evacuated to my father’s headquarters at Fort Story during Hurricane Donna. The front doors of the building were braced with 2X4s and I remember peering through the inset glass windows at a blurred maelstrom of wind, rain and flying debris. When we returned to our house, the beaches were filled with seaweed, broken wood from docks, glass containers, and numerous drowned wharf rats that lived among the boulders of the seawall. My father disliked rats having encountered giant jungle rodents while living and fighting in New Guinea during the Second World War and was pleased with the thought that now few would boldly venture into our front yard while he was grilling steaks.
When our family returned from Austria after a posting to Salzburg, we moved to Fort Monroe, also on the Chesapeake Bay. The fort was constructed in 1834 and was a critical military installation held by the Federals during the Civil War. We lived within the moat walls of the old fortress in a house previously occupied by Robert E. Lee prior to the Civil War. The original, large house during Lee’s time had been divided into three units that were residences for military officers and their families. Our section was the former slave quarters during Lee’s occupancy. One-hundred and fifty years ago residents of Fort Monroe could very likely hear and see the cannon fire as the ironclads CSS Virginia and USS Monitor bounced shells off of each other’s thick iron skins in the Hampton Roads off-shore of the Fort. The fortress became known as freedom fortress because any slave from the south that reached the installation during the war would be free. It also housed the imprisoned Confederate President Jefferson Davis in its casemates in 1865-6. My brother, sisters and I thought the damp, cramped casemate quarters were filled with the skeletons and ghosts of civil war prisoners. In 1954, Hurricane Hazel crashed through the mid-Atlantic states including Virginia and flooded many low lying areas along Chesapeake Bay. I cannot remember much of the storm except down trees within the moat. The Fort is no longer a military base but has been designated a historic monument.
During the fall and winter, large storms frequently batter the Oregon and Washington coasts and occasional create high winds in the Willamette Valley. They often recreate the shorelines, scouring sand from one beach and filling another. They push giant tree trunks onshore and inundate estuaries during high tides. I remember hiking near Glacier Peak with my dog, Isaac, in the early 1980s. We repeatedly crossed and re-crossed a stream on giant ancient fir trees that had been push over during Cascade Mountain wind storms. The ancient logs often redirected flows and created quiet pools inhabited by young fish. Occasionally we found scat left on the center of these logs by a coyote as it made its way across the natural bridge. For the last few weeks, while working on my computer, I occasionally would see giant trees floating down the high-flowing Willamette River. They were likely felled during some earlier fall or winter wind storm along the shores of the river or some tributary and eventually picked up by inundating waters and carried past my window.
