Saturday, July 19, 2003

Night Flight on St. George


One of the things I love about the southern mountains is the great variety of life you find there, but down on the Gulf Coast beach I was struck by the great blast of life and activity that swarms around and screams at everything, including you. Of course the beach is one of the greatest ecotones in creation, where the kingdoms of ocean, land and air crash together, swirling around in a great frantic estacy of hide and seek. In a sense, the human presence constitutes a fourth kingdom, since we can easily wander through what is to us a playground of distractions, hardly aware of our great priviledge in that the other players who don't hide well enough in this great game get eaten.
Then the sun goes down and the human kingdom retreats to a virtual kingdom, to worship its great lord, TV. I guess that's where we get eaten.
But outside now, the night wind blows clear and finally runs cool, and dreams go sailing across the dunes.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.