Wishing every month of the year could be June

The ferry leaves the dock with a slow, groaning inertia.  Engines idle hungrily under the diesel thump as air conditioners and fans are pushed to high.   Cars packed like those in a cannery settle in for the short ride.  We limbo sideways out the door, trying not to door whack the elderly couple in their golden sedan.  A woman behind us grips her wheel, hair fanning out from the a.c.'s wake.  From a once red F150 we hear Tommy James and the Shondells Crystal Blue Persuasion.  My seven year old grabs my hand and we move through the salt air and up onto  the observation deck.  Our stomachs are full of fried clams and grape Nehi's.  It's summer in the Outer Banks.

This is June, probably the finest month of the year.  Everything seems so possible.  The breadth of summer just streaming out before you into an unknowable distance.  This is the month of childhood and one that still settles expectantly on even the oldest of travel companions. 

 thinking of another batch

Eventually we head South and end up in Wrightsville.  The scene of so much of a misspent youth.  The swells are kneeish at best and nothing is happening.  The beach breaks are still crummy and the break near the pier is too policed.  Figure Eight is rejoining the sea. We grab Carolina dogs at the Trolley Stop and eavesdrop on the same conversations that we surely had while perched on our beater Wagoneers. Inevitably there is talk of a party across Masonboro inlet.  Someone will swim across, someone will barely make it to the barnacle encrusted buoy after misjudging currents, someones friends will pluck them from the sea in an overloaded Grady White. 

These talks never end.  My son is finishing his dog and we seem fitting bookends to the most summery of discussions.

Despite our better judgment we are working on pulling together something a bit more comprehensive than our sporadic offerings.  This seems like work but we have listened to what you want.  We'll keep everyone posted as ideas emerge and designs materialize. 

I'm still thoroughly against any kind of seasonal collection.  The goal as always is an 8 week pulse of something new and worth acquiring.  What is seasonal anymore?  For the price of a Varig ticket we can all go from Vilebrequins and oxfords to off piste in Portillo, wearing the most technical of Chouinard's gear.  I've left puzzled customs officers in Bridgetown as they sweated through a suitcase full of tweeds and sweaters, packed for a Hogmanay house party.  I suppose it's all relative.

  All I can promise is that no 640 gram shooting jackets will be seen in July.  Swim trunks in the midst of winter are something else entirely...

Cheers

E.M.M.