The Last Beach Fire?
Tuesday 23 November 2010 at 5:13 pm.There were many weighty and complicated issues in the recently released National Park Service Environmental Impact Statement on Off-Road Vehicle Rulemaking at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
But the one I keep coming back to and going over in my mind is the change in beach campfire regulations under the Park Service’s preferred alternative.
I surely did not want to have to tell my grandchildren – or their parents – that there will be no more bonfires when they come here to visit.
Well, maybe, if they start coming for Christmas we can have a beach fire, but not during their two- or three-week summer vacation.
The beach fires are a treasured tradition in our family – and in the families of many other islanders and visitors.
My family started having bonfires on the beach more than 30 years ago when my two children were youngsters.
Now they have nine children between them. And after a hiatus when the kids were really young, those grandchildren have adopted the bonfire tradition as their own.
The beach fire tradition has actually grown into a day-long affair.
Mornings are spent preparing and packing everything needed for dinner. I hate to say it, but that task usually falls to the girls and mothers, while the boys and dads scavenge for scrap wood and get everything else packed into the vehicles. 
Shortly after lunch, everyone heads to the beach, with vehicles absolutely loaded down with everything for a successful evening at the beach. The past few years, there has been scrap lumber strapped to the top of vehicles and grills fastened to platforms on the back of them.
Afternoons are spent swimming and boogie boarding. As the late afternoon approaches, parents light the charcoal grills and set up a makeshift table.
The grandkids and various cousins and friends start to work on digging the pit for the fire -- below the high-tide line, of course – and arranging the wood just so in a pyramid. While they wait for dinner, the kids play soccer or bocce ball on the beach.
We keep dinner simple – mostly hamburgers and hot dogs and chips. We learned long ago that little kids with food on plates are not a good idea on a windy beach with seagulls hovering for leftovers. Too much food ends up in the sand.
Some years, we are lucky enough to have clams to roast on the grill or steamed crabs. The children love banging the crabs to crack them open, but aren’t real big on eating them.
The rule is to clean up everything before dark. Next the kids arrange chairs in a big circle around the fire and wait impatiently for the sun to drop behind the dunes and into the western sky.
They beg to be chosen to light the fire, roast marshmallows for s’mores, throw sand on the fire to see all the colors that are created, and run around the beach.
The stargazing is terrific, and the kids like to go to the water’s edge and look for ghost crabs or phosphorescence – the tiny luminescent plankton that glow along the hard, wet sand when you drag you feet along the beach or stir up the water in the shallows. In some years, the glowing creatures have been temporarily housed in jars, where they make almost enough light to read a book by.
Two years ago, under the consent decree, the children were disappointed to learn that all vehicles have to be off the beach by 10 p.m. Bonfires, they think, were made to be enjoyed far longer.
But they all accepted the new rules and started the fires a little earlier than usual.
And they were always packed up and off the beach by 10 p.m.
However, now the rules have changed.
And there apparently will be no more summer beach picnics and bonfires.
In its preferred alternative, the Park Service says the beach fires are allowed year-round with the following restrictions:
- A non-fee education fire permit is required for any beach fire.
- Fires are prohibited from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. (And vehicles must be off the beach from 9 p.m. until 7 a.m.
- Fires are prohibited within resource closures and within 100 meters of any turtle nest closure. (Well, of course!)
- And the killer is this – from May 1 until Nov. 15, fires are permitted only in front of the villages on Hatteras Island and the Coquina Beach and Ocracoke day use areas during the sea turtle nesting season.
In another part of the voluminous FEIS, the Park Service says fires will also be allowed on the Lighthouse Beach and the Frisco Day Use Area.
I’m not sure which is correct, but the effect is the same. If you don’t own or rent a pricey oceanfront house, you can forget having a beach fire for more than half the year.
Why limit the fires to areas in front of villages and day use areas?
In its response to public comments after the Draft Environmental Impact Statement was issued last March, the Park Service said, “…the limitation of fires to certain developed areas of the seashore would limit and reduce the potential disturbance of nesting turtles and emerging hatchlings.”
Sea turtles do not necessarily avoid the village beaches, though fewer of them may nest there than on more isolated stretches of beach. In fact, several years ago, a park ranger told me about an incident near the Avon Pier – in front of the village – in which turtle hatchlings tried to crawl into a beach fire and were rescued by visitors.
The effect of this regulation is that only those who can afford to rent on the oceanfront will enjoy summer beach fires.
There are few, if any, public accesses in the villages for parking, and I doubt oceanfront property owners want folks traipsing through their yards to get to the beach – even if they could carry enough wood for a really good fire.
If we have to clear vehicles off the beach by 9 p.m. and prohibit fires in most places to protect turtles, then so be it.
But let’s don’t make the village oceanfront dwellers a privileged class.
If bonfires are prohibited, they should be prohibited on the entire seashore.
And, by the way, the photo with this article was taken at last summer’s bonfire and is, I presume, the last summer beach fire.
eleven comments
Its not over folks!
In the late ’50s and early ’60s, I could go up the lighthouse, whenever. run up it
and train for basketball for the CH Blue Devils. (“now the Hurricanes”, can’t have a name as as terrible as that). Now you have to pay to go up it!
I use to ride my bike from Hiway 12 to the point catch a few blues or drum and
peddle back home, clean the fish and then go to school. I was lucky as I drove the school bus at 16 years old. Now you have to pay for a fishing license and kids are not responsible enough to drive a school bus.
I have probably burnt several cords of wood on the beach. I don’t want to make anyone mad but the majority of the wood, burnt with blue and green flames.
The times spent around the fire with someone playing a guitar and looking at the Milky way (before all the light pollution) will always be burned in my mind as with all natives.
ouuond the fire with tourist girls, singing (someone always had a guitar)
Bertie Dixon, III (Email ) - 23-11-’10 20:02
“from May 1 until Nov. 15, fires are permitted only in front of the villages on Hatteras Island and the Coquina Beach and Ocracoke day use areas”
How can this be? Turtles don’t nest near the villages? Seems to me that IF lights on the beach were really an issue, the lights from the villages would be a problem. Seems to me that this rule is exactly ass backwards, IF it were to really protect the turtles.
This rule is only to prevent ORV users from having beach fires. How nice… This new plan is disgustingly anti-ORV.
How in the world does the NPS think these crazy new rules are not going to negatively affect the economy of the tourist based economy of the Island??????????????????????!
Matt - 24-11-’10 10:22
Irene: Your comment, “the one (regulation) I keep coming back to in my mind” really hit the nail on the head for me. I have not read all 800 pages plus of the EIS but I am certain I saw in there somewhere that it will be a violation of the regulations to double park on the beach. As you say, there are many more weighty and complicated issues involved but this one just keeps rolling over in my mind. Why would it matter? Its just a little gotcha stick tossed in to add insult to injury. So if you are riding down the beach and you see friends fishing with a couple of trucks pulled up to the high tide line and you pull in behind them just to say hello for a little while, that will be a violation of federal regulations. I suspect the Park Rangers are not excited about enforcing these regs but I also suspect they will do it, and if someone dares express their opinion of the EIS to the Ranger, things can only go down hill from there. What happened to Johnny? Oh he’s doing 3 to 5 in the Federal Pen for double parking on the beach at Hatteras. I wonder what other jems are hidden in those 800 pages.
Joe B. (Email ) - 24-11-’10 11:25
bummer that it is over, had a blast for 40 years of access, and during those years, no turtles were killed, no kids hit by cars, and plovers numbers trended up for the 70’s until today. These rules are totally over the top.
Good luck to those left.
Exbuxtonite - 24-11-’10 12:33
Oh I forgot to mention, this Thanksgiving I will be thanking Mike Murry for ruining the spring drum fishing, eliminating beach fires, family outings at the beach, drum fishing in the fall, night fishing, and all the activities we used to enjoy at the park.
Matt - 24-11-’10 13:05
Even though I have been coming down for about 30 years, my wife has been visiting for about 40. She remembers beach fires as a child, and we started having beach fires the past two years. From the Avon pier this summer I counted about 3 fires at the height of tourist season! As others commented, this is just the NPS giving in to enviormental groups that have no ties to Cape Hatteras. Probably many of their members never visited Hatteras Island! This isn’t about fires, it’s about beach access. Access to beaches which the last time I checked, were public lands which my tax dollars help to maintain.
Robert Bucks - 24-11-’10 20:15
One of the prime reasons, if not THE prime reason, the Seashore was established was based on a concern that private development was gradually limiting access to beaches on the East coast. Thus by establishing this very first Seashore, where private development was limited to the villages, the general populus would have an area where they would have access to beaches and would not be cut off by private development.
But now we have access being cut off by basically PRIVATE environ special interest groups. Really no difference than PRIVATE development. Results are the same. The public is cut off from access.
Salvo Jimmy (Email ) - 25-11-’10 09:08
And to add insult to injury the enabling legislation for the first ever National Seashore as it exists today still has all the words about recreation and wildlife it had from the beginning when the Seashore was first authorized as the Cape Hatteras National Seashore back in the 30’s.
Then because of concerns over possible restriction on recreation the enabling legislation was revised, long before the Seashore was even established by land acquisition, to modify the name to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area.
That is the name today by legislation. How convenient for NPS to drop Recreational Area as an administrative action to basically shorten the name and make it consistent with all other Seashore names which did not get the Recreational Area designation.
This Seashore was clearly established primarily for the use of the people, nolt wildlife.
Salvo Jimmy (Email ) - 25-11-’10 16:53
No beach fires, No Nothing. It is time we got fired up and put a stop to this nonsense. Surely there is something we can do. Got any suggestions, Irene.
Dewey Parr (Email ) - 27-11-’10 06:45
Spent 2 years comenting at reg neg… Spoke at several public coment periods.. Made my point.. They are not listening, nor will they…. How about a Public Burning of The DEIS and the FEIS.. Won’t take many copies to have a nice fire….
JAM
JAM (Email ) - 27-11-’10 08:53
Party on, it’s HATTERAS. Just change the venue. Park on the street in some development, at dusk, maybe near the ruins of the Frisco pier, walkover the dune on the trail between some houses and light it up on the beach. Half the houses are dark anyway. When the rentals complain, shrug your shoulders and say "we can’t get on the beach anymore, sorry."; Or, better yet, live by the pirate code and invite them to join! We already learned that the No Phun Service is not on the beach at night, or there wouldn’t be burned signs and crushed turtles. Or, will they become the National Padlock Service? Maybe they’ll let us have bonfires if we invite JR to sign a few arias or an adagio after the hotdogs and before the dessert. Or, maybe Crotalus could stop by and give a lecture about the true definition of science. I’d pay the cost of a permit to see that, but only if he dresses up like a big plover. As a closed-out beach astronomer who’s never run over anything feathered or cold-blooded, I’d settle for borrowing a certain SELC lawyer’s scope. Hey, optics that good shouldn’t be spoiled on something as mundane as birds. Oh, and before I forget, Audubon is missing out! Songbirds taste great when you bake them into a pie with organic home-grown vegetables. You’ll need a mess of them to make a pie though, and it’s sure hard to make a deadfall out of a big rock when you’re on a sandbar….
Edward Teach (Email ) - 23-11-’10 19:53