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I had the good fortune of spending the past week at my parents' vacation home on Topsail Island, North Carolina. What a place.

1. Their home is on a beautiful stretch of sand down the road and around the corner from Camp Lejeune, so the Ospreys fly with the ospreys.

2. This stretch of sand was once a proving ground for some of the United States' first rocketry efforts during the 1940s.

3. The principle of the ram jet engine (the mainstay of today's supersonic flight) was developed and proved on Topsail Island.

4. The Navy labeled this endeavor "Operation Bumblebee."

5. Beside a relic from those days in the museum is a poster with a few lines bumble bees: they should not be able to fly, given their weight and proportions, but they do; they do not know they can't. The homely innocence of this is somewhat startling alongside munitions.

6. The Assembly Building and the observation towers remain on Topsail Island and have survived the hurricanes without fail year after year. Just goes to show what's possible with a determined military and a pile of money.

7. This sandbar didn't have a name until 1971, when it seems to have become Topsail Island, according to the museum.

8. The waterways were bandit country in the days of Bluebeard. Legend has it that pirates would hide in the sound behind the dunes waiting for unsuspecting ships. Merchant captains would watch for their topsails and take evasive action. Thus Topsail became a regional name and maps from 1774 carry the names Topsail Sound, Old Topsail Inlet, and New Topsail Inlet--again, according to the museum.

9. Topsail Island is also home to the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, which opened in 1997. Jean Beasley opened it to honor the memory of her daughter's efforts to assure the survival of sea turtles.

10. The Project has been a major force in ensuring female turtles and their nests are protected on Topsail Island and that baby turtles make it safely from their nests to the sea.

11. The Center provides refuge and specialized care for sick and injured sea turtles.

12. Volunteers and donations keep this work alive, and the teens who work there are able to tell the stories of each of the turtles. Like Lennie, a permanent resident of the center who was blinded by a fisherman who struck him on the head with a blunt object after the turtle was caught in a fishing net.

13. Twelve to 20 recovered turtles are released each year after they are healed from the injuries inflicted primarily by boats and pollution.

The strange coexistence of the military, past and present, and nature asserting herself in myriad ways was a paradox. I couldn't help thinking that for all these various shows of strength life is very fragile, indeed.

Thursday Thirteen