Barrier Island Girl: September 2005

Monday, September 26, 2005

Trip to Tennessee

This morning I must leave my beautiful island and head for Tennessee. Hopefully, the remnants of Hurricane Rita will not be keeping me company on my drive north.

I will be away for several days visiting with family and friends, so I will not be posting new photographs on my blog during that time.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Seashells

A neighbor asked me a surprising question a few weeks ago, “Don’t you think you have enough seashells?”

I looked at him as if he’d asked, “Can a woman have too many shoes?”

“Too many,” I echoed?

“Well, I mean, you’re packing up to move to Florida and so far you’ve packed two boxes of seashells to take with you!”

“So?” I failed to make the connection.

“Well, my point is, who packs seashells in Tennessee, then pays someone to move them to Florida? You can always get more since you’re going to be living there, you know.”

“Yes, but they wouldn’t be THESE seashells that I picked up on my first trip to Pensacola Beach, or during Easter the next year, or like,” I brought out the heavy ammo, “after Ivan!”

My soon-to-be ex-neighbor walked away, shaking his head, quite befuddled. This, I realized, was the point where we are supposed to respect another person’s opinion. But, borrowing a quote from Henry Mencken, “only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart.”

Too many seashells? Puhlease!

I have lived on this island for less than 2 months and there are a couple of things I know for certain: You can never take too many photos of the beach and you can never have too many seashells.

You just have to rent more storage space.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Nature

"Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her. Without asking, or warning, she snatches us up into her circling dance, and whirls us on until we are tired, and drop from her arms."

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Last wave of the day

The Sweetest Air

When I was a little girl, every time my parents and I returned to Tennessee after a vacation or visit to out-of-state relatives, daddy would roll down the window and say the same thing when we crossed the Warren County line. “Boy, don’t that air smell sweeter? Whooeee.”

That always confused the heck out of me. Sniff as hard as I could, it made no sense whatsoever because from any direction we came home there was generally a herd of cows right at the county line and the only thing I smelled was cow manure. “That stinks, daddy! That itn’t sweeter!” And he would laugh at my scrunched-up nose.

All these years later, I finally get it. Now that I live on the beach, there are times I think the only reason I run an errand off-island is because of the immense joy I get in returning home. The impact of that view as I cross the bridge has not lessened one iota in the past six weeks I’ve been living here full time. In fact, just yesterday afternoon as I returned from Ace Hardware in Gulf Breeze, I rolled down the window as I drove across the bridge to the island and said out loud, “Boy, don’t that air smell sweeter? Whooeee!”