Cumberland: thoughts from day one

A poison ivey'd arrival on Cumberland and at the first scratch of a pen in nearly a month, my whole world of tenuous thoughts comes crashing down around me. I write and I live, and I rejoice in those two facts.

Today we glimpsed five roseate spoonbills feeding in the little pond amongst the woodstorks. On the beach, a loggerhead laying, missing a back flipper.  At willow dock, an alligator and two raccoons. The world is alive. Here we are, too.

I have no words for this place. Only feelings. But wide, expansive feelings, ones that swell up like a thunderstorm and clack across the sky and burst apart in a fury of rain. Feelings as delicate as the tiny Mycena mushrooms growing out of horse manure, as luminous as the goldfoot fern in the crook of the lovers oak. Feelings that shift like the dunes, that bury themselves in the sand like the fiddler crabs. My love for this place is indescribable.