Hurricanes

First Gustof and now, Hurricane Ike focused on the Gulf Coast, tearing our flimsy structures up and turning them into match sticks with little effort. Is it time to pay attention to what earth mother is telling us? Repair the marshes, disallow building directly on our shores and forget drilling on the coast. The coast, when it is calm and still or even stormy can be heaven; in a hurricane it is living hell and we have no business building in such vulnerable areas.

How do I know this? For a couple of years I lived on a seven-mile long moving sandspit called Alligator Point in North Florida. Living there fulfilled a dream for this Florida-born woman - I had dreamed of long walks on the beaches, late nights at water's edge watching the moon; sunsets and more and finally, my dream came true.

My home was roughly in the middle of the penninsula- a slender finger arced like first moon in the Gulf of Mexico. I had a huge backporch overlooking a canal which led out to Alligator Harbor and on around to the open water. Often I sat on the dock and watched mullet jump and listened tot the wind in the ancient, twisted pines. A great snowy egret visited frequently. somehow that bird knew when I was cooking because I'd feel a presence, turn around and there would be 'Snow,' waiting for his handout. The former owner of the house trained that bird and from what I heard, he used to be welcome in the house and on the backporch. I, however, wanted to return him to the wild and prevent dependence on hands that might not always be kind. I didfeed him when he asked and was thrilled when I saw the yellow surround on his beak turn from bright yellow to mellow turqoise and then I saw his mating plummage. Yes, it was a thrill to live there until the storms brought water up to my dock.

Water rising up to the floor of the dock meant 'clear out of Dodge' and I did it a number of times when I lived there. I never knew what I would find on my return, but the one that turned the tide for me was Hurricane Dennis. That year was stormy anyway and I had ridden out several good storms and enjoyed them all in my isolated post, but Dennis was different. Something in the air felt strange to me and I gathered up what I could and left. I didn't go back for a month - the road past the open Gulf was destroyed and my little car couldn't handle the debris.

When I finally went home it was to mold, loss and destruction but not nearly as much as some experienced: many of the homes simply collapsed and washed away. In my case, the inclosed ground floor had become a swimming pool and everything I owned down there was destroyed including precious journals, books, tools and holiday ornaments. One thing that comes to me frequently is a chandalear a friend gave me - I moved it everywhere I went but it didn't fit in that house on the coast. I wrapped it carefully in heavy plastic and stored it up high and forgot about it. On my return I discovered it had deteriorated in the salty humidity and was covered in green slime - too far gone to recover.

I left many things behind when I moved away from there not long after and the bag with the light fixture was one of them, but it is my Marguirite Henry Horses book that I see when I think of departure from my paradise, its moldy pages flipping in the clean salt air in the pile at the street. Hopefully, someone not sensitive to mold found it, but I couldn't keep it. Now, I live in the mountains, far from my beloved coast, but I dream of it often and can still tune my pulse to the waves when I close my eyes in sleep at night, but I will never live that close to the open coast again.