(Via iPhone)(Updated with photographs: click to enlarge.)

Eastern North Carolina is not home to a great number of popular tourist destinations, but it has its share of important historic sites. I set out this morning to see at least one of them, something beyond the environs of New Bern.

The place where I sit now might have never been famous. It is but a small, round, wind-swept hill, an overgrown sand dune. To the east, a quarter-mile distant, the swells of the Atlantic Ocean turn to small breakers on the beach, just beyond the houses and condominiums that mark the passage of time and the march of civilization.

Once, this place was a serene, deserted tidal plain, chosen by two brothers for a grand experiment. For centuries, man had dreamed of having the ability to fly; to strap on a heavier-than-air device and keep it in the air under its own power. Many, learned and loony alike, had tried and failed, sometimes paying with their lives. Here, on the very spot where I sit, two young bicycle mechanics turned that dream to reality.

As my favorite poem begins, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the sky on laughter-silvered wings. There is no more sublime experience to be had in mortal life than to leave the earth behind, to rise and be held aloft by the very air we breathe. There are those who will insist that flying itself is a religion; if they are right, I am now upon the earth’s holiest ground.

Two small bronze statues of Orville and Wilbur Wright flank the memorial, looking out over the plain below. Behind them, a sixty-foot marble wing towers into the sky, upon which their names are carved. An inscription circles the base of the monument:

IN COMMEMORATION OF THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR BY THE BROTHERS WILBUR AND ORVILLE WRIGHT CONCEIVED BY GENIUS ACHIEVED BY DAUNTLESS RESOLUTION AND UNCONQUERABLE FAITH

ERECTED BY THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES BEGUN 1928 DEDICATED 1932

Fittingly, a small airstrip with one paved runway is part of the facility. I walked around it for a while, too, vowing to return someday and squeak my wheels on a runway just yards from the site of the first optional landing ever made by a pilot.

So many things are possible because of powered flight. Not only were these our first cautious steps toward space and the stars, but the work done here made the world just a little smaller, and brought states and countries just a little closer.

The sky to the west is dark. A storm is coming; it’s probably ten miles from me, but it’s moving in steadily. I must leave here soon, put myself back among the cars and the tourists and the winding road home to New Bern, but I am glad I found myself here today. This is the kind of history that is close to my heart. Thanks, boys. We owe you.