Our family traveled to Kitty Hawk in 1973, walking up the side of Kill Devil Hill. The grass was lush and green. As a four-year-old, my mind was alight with images of flight and invention.
Our tour guide waved his arms like a bird, shouting into the wind, "When Wilbur and Orville first arrived here, they ran down this hill moving like birds, trying to better understand how to bank and turn in the wind."
Flapping and jumping. It wasn't something the locals were accustomed to seeing grown men do, especially in formal wool suits on hot days.
Arms outstretched, turning and tilting like a Hopi Indian dancer, I ran down and across the sloping hill from the monument. A killdeer flew up in front of me, squawking madly. I tumbled and landed on my back on the hillside looking upward.
I watched it fly higher, twisting and turning in invisible waves and eddies. Jumping up, I tumble down the grass and land on my feet this time, in a squat. Wilbur and Orville were preparing their legs for the jolts and twists of their first flight back in 1903.
I had yet to start Kindergarden on that first trip to Kitty Hawk. It was the year before my mother left my father. We'd come to the Outer Banks with our small blue tent camper hiched to the Pontiac.