This is the text of Mary's e-mail message regarding our time in north Carolina:
...my favorite part was just sitting on the beach. i may not be so up for drowning, or even a drubbing, but i could sit on the beach all day and listen to and watch the waves roll in. life just does not get any better than that in my book. my soul is drawn to water, and the relentless sound of the waves. perhaps it is the unending horizon i seek...but i always feel like i am living in the wrong place when i come home and am insulated by trees....i long for a good log home on a nasty stretch of beach somewhere, trees behind me and water to the front, and a good strong lawn of daffodils, trilliums and ferns...perhaps a box of watercolors on the porch.....for a week, i got some of that....
-Mary Konieczny Williams, 6-29-02