Gifts From the Ocean

Golly gee you guys, this ‘ol Montana gal lived through her first hurricane! Hurricane Florence hit here HARD (many parts of North Carolina and South Carolina are completely devastated) and all the locals I spoke to said that this storm was far worse than Hurricane Matthew that hit a couple of years ago. I bunkered down in my apartment during the worst few days of it, and I was lucky to have remained safe. My car was pretty lucky too.

As someone who has never experienced a hurricane before, what really got to me mentally, were all the days of prolonged flooding everywhere *after* the hurricane. Sooo many roads were closed for quite some time!! And it is STILL going on, nearly 2+ weeks after the hurricane! Rivers are still cresting, people are still evacuating, properties are still being destroyed and some roads are still closed with new ones closing every day. It’s a nightmare, honestly. I have been cooped up inside my apartment so have gotten some extra time to do a little writing. Expect a few more blog posts from me in the next few days/weeks (usually I barely get one per month written lol🙊🙉🙈)

After quite awhile, a few of the roads I had my eye on reopened and I used the opportunity to finally get out of the house and go to the beach. Specifically, I went to a very special area called Bull’s Island near Awendaw, South Carolina. It’s a federally protected coastal reserve, and as a result, is absolutely teeming with plant and animal life of all kinds! Our guide said it likely looks very much the same as it did 3,000 years ago. Wow! You don’t hear that too often these days. There is also a VERY cool area of the beach with miles of driftwood trees strewn about that look like “bones”, hence the name “Boneyard Beach“.

Because this area is so incredible and I had such a special time there, I am going to let the pictures do most of the talking. I wanted to show off some of the true beauty of this area despite all the ugliness and destruction the hurricane caused this state.

Gifts from the Ocean include (but are not limited to):

The promise of a beautiful day ahead.

Shells in all their splendor, and a reminder that there are Universes within. There were actually HUGE shells further down the beach. Like foot-long shells of all different kinds !!!

Good picnic spot. Beer and boiled peanuts. I gotta say, as a Northerner I think I prefer the dry, crunchy kind lol. And the first time I had them, I ate the shells too. Whaaat?? Nobody told me how to eat them 🙈🙉🙊

Good picture taking spots 😆

Transformation. Mystery.

Awe and the gentle reminder that one should feel small and humble while walking along the sand and looking out at the ocean.

And, to me, the best part of all of today: DOLPHINS!!! Of course I couldn’t get a good picture of them, but I have never seen dolphins sooo up close and personal. They were breaching like crazy! Two of them did so in unison 😍. Honestly, they were almost putting on a show for us and it was like soul-medicine to see them like this, so happy in their natural world. The guide said they are really in their element in the reserve because they are the top predator and on top of the food chain. The dolphins were the best gift of all today, and the cherry on top was seeing two huge bald eagles perching majestically atop of trees as we were heading back to the mainland.

I recently read a blog post by a writer named Carla Powell. In it she writes about traveling to many other countries by herself and sort of how it came to be and why she does it. She ended her piece with this, “life is too precious to wait for someone else to join *your* adventure.Just go.”

And I think that is some damn good advice to follow 😎.