SUSAN CERULEAN: On November 13,
Rhys Bowen mused on this blog about escaping to special places she loves, in these troubled
times. Places that might be safer. Places untouched by violence and wildfire and
climate change.
Part of
me wants to escape, too. But what happens when even your beloved place of
solace is hurt or destroyed by fire, wind, storm or violence?
Hurricane
Michael, a Class
4 hurricane with wind speeds topping 150 miles per hour, buzz-sawed through North Florida four weeks ago.
My special place, a coastal barrier island with wide beaches, enormous sand
dunes and green pine forests, was slammed by the eastern bands of that
storm. The island, a national wildlife
refuge, didn’t receive the attention of nearby, hard-hit communities of Panama
City, Mexico Beach and Port Saint Joe, because no people live there.
But a week
after the storm, my husband and I kayaked over to the island, and were shocked
at the loss of miles of tall, 800-year-old sand dunes, the island's first line
of defense. Nor could we account for the
hundreds of brown pelicans, black skimmers, gulls and terns that had made their
homes--the places where they nest and rest and
raise their young--on the island.
I knew I
couldn’t bring back the birds or the dunes, or stop hurricanes or the sea level
from rising, but I knew what I could
do: pick up trash left behind by the storm.
I cleared about
a mile of the beach of plastic, enough it seemed, to fill a Walmart. Four enormous trash cans, watering cans and
golf tees, fishing poles and buckets, chairs and children’s toys, and even the
signs that had marked off the nesting bird areas.
It was a cool
beautiful day, and somehow, in all those hours of schlepping and hauling trash,
I found some happiness. When the birds
do come back, they won’t find their refuge choked with storm debris. And perhaps, I thought, the beaches, now
doubled or tripled in width, would offer attractive nesting to sea turtle
nesting next year.
What do you turn to when the problems of the world feel overwhelming?
