CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/35097
buzzing of cicadas in the trees. You’ll see jon boats with two buds on board, caps on their heads and rods at their feet. You’ll see bigger, faster, sleeker boats, those with steering wheels and fishing poles standing erect like great spars on ships. You’ll see pontoons weighted with families and gaudy blow-up floats. You’ll see the stylish boats — usually of the Ski Nautique variety — with the woo-hoo! crowds and stereos blaring The Eagles or Creedence or Toby Keith, and a bikini- clad passenger on the bow, bronzing in the sun. And the jet skis, those brash jet skis, zipping along like crotch rockets on the highway weaving through traffic. You’ll see show-offs on skis, show-offs on knee boards (so help me, I have seen them jump logs and stumps), and kids shrieking on inner tubes. You might even spot a canoe or a kayak, noiselessly scratching the water’s surface. A summer day ushers in boatloads of people seeking fun and fish and freedom. Ah, freedom. “There warn’t no home like a raft, after all,” in the immortal words of a 14-year-old boy named Huckleberry Finn. “Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” Words from that most American of tales inevitably come floating into my mind when there’s water below me and sky above. On a boat, indifferent to destination, we, like Huck, give “not a damn for whatever might be happening on shore.” And the mystique of the river doesn’t blink out with the setting sun. Cicadas yield to tree frogs and crickets and occasionally to the barred owls. There is no sound in nature, I think, as melodic and hauntingly beautiful as the hoot of the barred owl. Birders say it sounds akin to someone calling out the words, “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you awww?” The river is alive day and night, January and July, engine on or off. It’s the lifeblood of our region, the Cape Fear. And when you’re on it, when there’s sunshine on your shoulders and wind in your hair and water at your toes, you feel so free. And so alive.CV BUSINESS & REAL ESTATE APPRAISERS BUSINESS & REAL ESTATE APPRAISERS “Times Are Changing... and so are values” www.keithvaluation.com 910.323.3222 | 121 S. Cool Spring St., Fayetteville, NC 28301 McCoy Wiggins Cleveland & O’Connor PLLC Richard M. Wiggins • Alfred E. Cleveland • Steven J. O’Connor • Anne Mayo Evans Jim Wade Goodman • James Albert McLean III • Nicole Jones Civil, Commercial & Business Litigation Condemnations Business Organizations Buy, Sell & Restructuring Wills & Estates Large Estate Administration Real Estate (Commercial, Residential & Zoning) Immigration Law Banking Law Municipal & Institutional Bonds Bankruptcy In practice since 1955. One of southeastern North Carolina’s most established firms. Lawyers have been recognized in NC Legal Elite and Best Lawyers of America. Listed in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. AV Rating in Martindale-Hubbell. 202 Fairway Drive • Fayetteville, NC 28305 • 910.483.8104 CityViewNC.com | 39