But the Lord hurled a powerful wind over the sea, causing a violent storm that threatened to break the ship apart. Fearing for their lives, the desperate sailors shouted to their gods for help and threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. – Jonah 1:4-5

Well it didn’t get tropical out here, but the low pressure system that moved in has reminded us that we are essentially just a patch of sand in the middle of the Atlantic out here on Hatteras Island.

One more reason that, even though I love love love vacationing near the ocean, I wouldn’t for a skinny minute think of owning property on the beach. On some bluffs overlooking the English Channel? Heck, yes! On a strip of sand in the middle of an ocean? Thanks, but I don’t think so!

That reminder was a good way to go into what turned out to be the perfect rainy day activity, a few hours perusing the creatively curated “Graveyard of the Atlantic” Museum.

The history of these shipwrecks is both surreal and amazing (give me just a moment, I have to find a map, there’s a “Ghost Fleet” chart that supports this story… Okay, here it is). I found this graphic, first published by National Geographic in 1969, in a study put out by NOOA detailing many of the literally thousands of documented shipwrecks off the Outer Banks.

Not just Facts but Story:

It’s a fascinating museum, and one of the things this exhibition does well is to supplement the displays and the cold facts with stories from some of the actual people who experienced these tragic events.

The exhibit includes a series of life-sized display screens scattered among the artifacts, featuring actors who present these stories as first-person narratives, words from journals and letters actually written by the people who were on the scene. People like local hero Rasmus Midgett, who personally rescued ten people from a shipwreck in 1899.

Or the chilling tale told by the commander of the the USS Roper (Lt. Commander Hamilton W. Howe), the navy destroyer responsible for tracking and sinking the first German WW2 U-Boat (U-85) off the Outer Banks the night of April 13-14, 1942.

And then the horrifying experience Rebecca Lamar endured on board the luxury steamship Pulaski, lost off the North Carolina coast after the boiler exploded and sheered the vessel in half June 14, 1838. Two-thirds of the estimated 200 souls on board – including much of her immediate family – were lost.

This is how we roll:

This is very much a signature “Rebekah and Derek” travelogue. We love the scenery and we enjoy being outdoors, but it’s very important to both of us that we find the story too.

Story works because it is how we learn. And it is how we learn because it is who we are. It is much easier to absorb detail when it is attached to real people and a story that we can follow.

We were/are (and I have written about this before) created for relationship and for the experience of community. Story, then, resonates with the foundational purpose of our existence as human beings.

This is why I also talk about our place in “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” Not because it is entertaining but because it is who we are. When we run away from relationship and abandon the idea of Creator and creation then we lose contact with essential truths that are, in my estimation, non-negotiable.

Loneliness may be an important health crisis in the United States, but I believe loss of purpose and losing touch with a sense of who we really are remains a deeper tragedy, one that undergirds loneliness (and a lot more).

Okay, enough with the pontificating other than this last thought: It’s not being an alien that’s the problem, it’s alienation.

The following gallery comprises the balance of the photographs – DEREK