We lost another one this year. 

Native Nags Header and longtime Rodanthe stalwart Walter Walker Pruden passed away in his second home in Eleuthera, Bahamas, in late March. As his longtime friend Richard Byrd said to me, “He made his last stand in a place he loved.” 

In my next life, I'm coming back as a grom. No doubt about it. 

Any surfer will tell you, the best way to get good at surfing is to start as a grom. Surfing is a sport that takes a lifetime to master, and if you don't start early, you don't stand much of a chance.

 For those who live and surf on the Outer Banks, Jesse Hines needs little introduction. He’s a hometown hero who’s traveled the world, surfing exotic breaks in Alaska, Norway, Iceland, and other frigid locales. He’s been featured on the covers of multiple international surf magazines...And he's got the best fro-yo shop in town...

If Rascoe Hunt didn’t exist, we would have had to invent him. The Outer Banks just wouldn’t be the same otherwise...

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am not an early riser by nature. But if the forecast calls for surf, or just the possibility of interesting light, I'll drag myself out of whatever stage of slumber I'm in, and be on the beach at dawn, camera at the ready...

A few weeks ago I sat down with Jim Bunch. Jim was one of the first people to introduce surfing to the Outer Banks, and here he tells the story of the first surf club in Kitty Hawk.   Many thanks to Keith Newsome for facilitating the meeting. 

Every crew in every surf town in every state and country has a guy like Dana.  A guy that just plain loves to surf.  A guy who totally shreds but doesn't give a rat's ass for making the big-time.  A guy who will paddle out no matter how big or how cold or how messy it is, not because it's in his contract, but because it's in his blood....

It's a point of fact, and a point of pride:  surfers who grow up riding the beachbreaks of the mid-Atlantic coast can tube-ride with the best of them, all around the world.  Why?  Read on...

Have you seen this guy?  If you frequent the surf breaks in Kill Devil Hills or Kitty Hawk, chances are you've caught a glimpse of him waxing up his board out the back of his black Cherokee, making a beeline for the beach, or shredding whatever the ocean is serving up on any given day with the local heavies.  

Winter is coming, and soon surfing around these parts will be an activity only for the strong of heart.  Everybody knows to make hay while the sun shines, and for the last two weeks, there's been a lot of haymaking...

Life is a dance, as my mama says; and those who live it well move with a certain grace: an undefinable, often even unnoticed, way of being-in-the-world that separates the charismatic among us from the rest of the great human herd. 

Buxton's photographer laureate Daniel Pullen is a busy man.  Apart from running a highly successful photography business with his wife Kate, Pullen is the go-to surf photographer for all things Hatteras.  His photos have appeared in just about every major surfing publication and media outlet, and some of the most iconic images of the Outer Banks bear his signature...

...is no more than a wee tale that tells you something beyond the bare facts about a people and a place.  Legends are truth, fiction, poetry, symbolism, and personality all rolled up into stories that don't necessarily follow normal plot-lines.