On the spot along the Outer Banks
Most likely we experience it first as children, on summer vacation or a school trip: the sensation that something really important from a long time ago happened right here, on this very spot. Visits to our national monuments still stir the same old feeling, but, as I am long past childhood, a question arises that did not then. How is it that by stepping literally onto the spot, we step out of our own heads and into the past? The conventional wisdom for the past half-century or so has been that historic sites demand explanation or, in professional jargon, interpretation.
