Monday, March 5, 2012

Dauphin Island

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.

2 comments:

  1. 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!

    I'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!

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  2. This sounds wonderful. May your soul be full of the things that Little Green has to offer.

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