Passing Time

This week has been relaxing. Alison hasn't felt good, so we've been laying around. But it's more a function of where we've been laying that's been cool. My family rented a cabin on Hunting Island; right next to the lighthouse and adjacent to the beach. I wish Alison would have felt better, but I think watching movies, and sitting at the beach was good for her. I could tell that she liked playing cards too, because she kept yelping "UNO" before me, making me draw 4. Vicious is the first word that comes to mind.

The concept I noticed all around me this week was recycling/renewal. The first and most obvious reason is erosion. The beach is disappearing. The storms this week pretty much annihilated the sand that was replenished this year. See, Hunting Island is THE barrier island for Beaufort. It absorbs most of the weather, the tides, and the wind. It's been disappearing since before Carolina was a state. Now the rate is 15 feet per year. When we visited the lighthouse, I read that the lost sand is depositing itself 1 mile off-shore. It will create a new Island. They've had to move the lighthouse three times. The last time, in 1885, it was moved more than a mile inland to the middle of the island. Today a bad storm would put water on its foundation. They claim it's 400 ft from sea still. I think it's closer.

There's renewal in the season changing. It's just only beginning Autumn here. Driving with Alison all week, and specifically coming home from the beach after dark and in the rain, I noticed leaves in the road, wet and being blown around. In my mind I see one blowing off the side and up against the forest floor, only to decay and become soil by spring.

Finally, I noticed renewal in all of us. I feel eroded and in transition. But I think this week taught me to fight it less. To enjoy being here, surrounded by a world re-creating itself. Our lives will change and our circumstances as well. It's natural, isn't it? So I hope to enjoy the process.