The Impulsive Traveler: Mystery, history and horses on North Carolina’s Outer Banks

Poking around the park on a drizzly day, we pick up some less well-known Outer Banks history. Because Roanoke we know. And Kitty Hawk, of course. But who knew that in the early 20th century, the waterfowl were so plentiful on Currituck Sound — the body of water separating the Banks from the mainland is on the Atlantic Flyway, the north-south migration route for many a goose, etc. — that locals did a booming business selling their catch to restaurants in the Northeast? Pretty soon, natch, the sportsmen wanted in on the action, and hunt clubs proliferated. Then the Knights built their haven, dubbed Corolla Island, so that Marie Louise — sorry, no ladies in the clubs — could get her hunting jollies, too.

After the Knights died and the waterfowl declined (totally unrelated!), the estate served variously as a World War II Coast Guard receiving station, a weekend playground for a wealthy Washington meatpacker (he gave it its present name), a boys’ academy and a secret research center for a company trying to develop a solid rocket fuel. Wouldn’t have been hard to keep things secret around here: Before a paved road from the more southerly town of Duck was laid in 1985, this was one tough spot to get to. “It was a really desolate place,” declares our ghost tour guide.

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I can almost see that as we stand on the front lawn watching the waters of the sound lap against the edges of the grass and the moon rise high among the clouds. It’s as still as can be, and if I block out the lights from Route 12 with my hand, pretty dark. But not too dark for us to spy a pale white egret wading in the water near the boathouse.

That whole waterfowl thing is pretty fascinating, but, well, I admit it: We can’t help migrating, like most of the tourist pack, toward another kind of wildlife. We skip the wildfowl center in favor of the restored historic schoolhouse that’s home to the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, a nonprofit group that manages the area’s herd of 128 (at the moment) colonial Spanish mustangs.

Executive Director Karen McCalpin fills us in on the state of the herd, the direct descendants of steeds the conquistadors brought to America 500 years ago, and the group’s efforts to protect it. Which can be a challenge, what with all the commercial tours that haul visitors up and down the beach in pursuit of a glimpse of the animals. Before that darned road was extended to Corolla, the horses used to roam all around the area. But now they’re fenced off — for their own sake — on a 135-acre stretch of beach. And trying to catch sight of them is like a search for the Holy Grail.

Which doesn’t mean that my sister and I and our husbands wouldn’t like to see them, anyway. But even though we have a four-wheel-drive vehicle — required to navigate the seaside strand — we’re not about to join that pack of rubber-neckers. Especially after we drive up to the beach entrance and spot a tow truck straining to haul a Jeep Cherokee out of the sand.

We repair instead to the nearby Currituck Banks National Estuarine Research Reserve, per McCalpin’s suggestion. “There are a couple of harems that like to hang out there,” she confides. “You might just happen to see them.”

We follow the boardwalk through the maritime forest of the preserve all the way out to where it ends at the edge of the sound. It’s a gloriously warm and sunny day — who’d think it was the middle of October? — and the marsh grasses ripple golden yellow against the water’s blue.

“Here, horsey, horsey,” call the husbands (such comedians), but there are no ponies anywhere. Just dragonflies darting among the reeds and a lone osprey making, yes, lazy circles in the sky. It’s beautiful and serene and, when we stop to listen, so hushed that it’s almost . . . spooky.

Corolla, N.C.: How to get there, where to stay and what to do