to Chincoteague and back

 Almost every summer since I was nine years old, I've spent a week on Chincoteague Island with my family.  There is a lot of good-natured shouting, and beer, and singing and bike riding and music, games, fresh seafood night after night, icecream, mosquito bites, happiness and exhaustion.  I am grateful for the time we share there and the string of memories I've made there over time; and I am also very happy to be back home at my table right now.  It is probably somewhere between 80 and 90 degrees in my apartment, and I am surrounded by a slew of messiness that needs to be sorted and put away.  I have all kinds of things to do as soon as I finish typing.  But the fan is humming nicely, an evening thunderstorm is brewing, and it is going to feel so good to get things in order again.  I'll  put fresh sheets on my bed, take a pile of donations to the Goodwill, take recycling to the bins, go to the grocery store to get ingredients for dinner since my refrigerator and cupboards are empty, and then be well on my way back into the swing of everyday life.

But before I move on completely, I will briefly commemorate this year's trip.  Mimosa trees were blooming and smelling wonderful.

 I just feel like the eve of this house is good for the imagination.

 These are pictures from a garden a few houses away from ours.  My mom showed it to me.  She loves it and thinks is magical and I have to agree with her... a tall shrub with bright orange blossoms...

 very big, very beautifully colored rose hips...

 dangling grapes...

 pink yarrow that fairies probably enjoy...

 growing figs...

 the rose before it becomes a hip...

 and just a sprinkling of large white daisies to pop out of the shadows.

 The bike paths on Assateague are the ideal atmosphere for thinking and just breathing while you pedal.  You see lots of birds and very few people...

 The beach you can drive to is usually very crowded, but this stretch of the beach is only accessible by foot or bicycle.  Yes, that is underwear billowing in the wind.

 You hear the grasses rustling, and lots of red-winged blackbirds...

And the piney parts of the paths smell sweet with sun-baked needles.  I imagined a coastal Little Red Riding Hood making her way along the path because there was such a strong feeling of solitude yet not, like creatures were watching.  At this particular point in the path, you can hear the surf, and I startled (and was startled by) a large hunch backed raccoon loping in front of me.

In spite of the beauty, I wouldn't want to live on Chincoteague or Assateague.  The ocean is too severe, and the wind and the salt are too corrosive, and the sulfur-stinking marsh mud and the thick mosquitoes... all good reminders of the brevity and transience of life, but maybe too much so to feel like home.

 But they do have wonderful pine cones...

And of course it is a place where you have to stop often for ducks and ducklings to cross the road, which is a good thing to be forced into doing when we are often so inclined to hurry.