Sitting on the west end of Dauphin Island.
I'm not sure why I chose it among all the places I searched. Why not Destin, Gulf Shores, St. Augustine or a thousand other places. I started with what I didn't want - odd how that is sometimes an easier place to start. I didn't want a pool, or a gym, or a shit ton of people. I didn't want to live stacked in some matrix of a condo megaplex or big view-obstructing megamansions. I wanted the Gulf Coast of the 1940's with its small bungalows scattered down the dunes. I didn't want noise or traffic. I didn't want a thousand distractions.
I wanted a place where the beach was still the major activity. I wanted wind. I wanted to see the water, to taste it in the air. I wanted communion with sand, with water, with sky. I wanted hours that stretched out empty in which to write or walk the beach alone. I wanted to travel light, the way I used to, to accept that there must be things left behind. In this case a functional camera which grates on me from the beginning.
Watching the gulls spin like a white ferris wheel, the low end dipping into the sound then looping out like thread from a spool.
I saw this little green house and just knew - THERE! I could find what I needed - THERE! Not aware of that entire list of wants when I spied it. Even though I knew it suited where I was and what I needed, I was afraid, so afraid to leap. Was I afraid I would find myself there? Was I afraid I wouldn't?
Just before I left, a friend mentioned the word wildness. And I thought - yes. I need wildness. Oh not the kind that most people think of when they hear the word. I blame Girls Gone Wild for that. I am not talking about misbehaving party monkeys here. I'm talking about true wildness, a place where your spirit communes with something outside of you, something larger than you and yet still of you. A place where you get swept away, where you give over.
Even as I write this, my eyes are continually drawn back to OUT THERE where the sound is full of whitecaps on impossibly blue water. I know I will join them soon and smile.
Driving down I am listening to Stephen King's Dumas Key in which one of the main characters, an old woman, has Alzheimer's, a fact that surprises tears from me when it touches a place similar to my mother's. The protagonist stays in a large salmon beach house he calls Big Pink. I start to think of my place as Little Green, start calling it that in my head and I wonder who I will meet there. For I have come to meet someone that much is clear
I think I see someone out there hunkered on the dune, but when I put on my glasses it turns out to be just a large chunk of charred wood. I feel them out there circling, see their shadows dart between the dunes and think what are you waiting for? I'm right here.
So beautifully described you don't need a camera - to share it with us anyway. My favorite part: "I wanted to see the water, to taste it in the air." I love salt air!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you won't be able to bring back memories of the trip for yourself. Maybe you could pick up a disposable camera. Have a glorious and refreshing time!
This sounds wonderful. May your soul be full of the things that Little Green has to offer.
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