A Walker in the Suburbs

In years past, Garrett County has been an oasis of mountain coolness, even when the weather is hot back home. This year, the humidity is here, too. No problem, though, because there are all sorts of water bodies to help you deal with it.

In addition to Deep Creek Lake, the big kahuna, there are smaller ponds, including the one at Herrington Manor State Park, the most kid-friendly we’ve found. We headed there yesterday.

While it wasn’t the spun-sugar sand of Siesta Key, there was still a beach for digging and making sand castles, and the kiddos spent hours in the lake. Meanwhile, the adults (or at least this adult) tucked herself away in the shade and watched the scene unfold.

There was plenty of people-watching, mostly keeping my eyes on the grandchildren, who paddled and dove and got rides on a float from their oldest cousin. Their glee was more than worth the price of admission.

(These weren’t my grandkids — I’m relieved to say — but they express the possibilities of this place)

I understand why the landscapes of our birth and upbringing feel comfortable and right. What I don’t understand is how places we find much later in life feel just the same way. Garrett County, Maryland is one of those places for me.

I felt it yesterday when I drove here from Virginia, in and out of torrential rain. I felt it when I finally got close and saw the mountains rising from the mist.

I feel it now, when I’m itching to take my usual walk that skirts a cove of Deep Creek Lake. It’s more than affinity. It’s as if I’ve known this place from another lifetime. Maybe this week I’ll understand it better. I’ll certainly try.

Though my body is back in Virginia my mind is still at the beach with the sea and the shorebirds … and even with the wrack. Described as the ocean’s bathtub ring, wrack is the flotsam the waves drag in, the seaweed, driftwood, even the marine animals.

I took this picture the year my Florida visit coincided with the Red Tide, when fish were routinely washing up on shore, victims of an algae bloom that was no picnic for humans either. But the wrack is always present, usually without dead fish. In fact, the wrack nourishes marine creatures. It lingers at the high tide line, where I sidestep it when walking.

A sign about wrack at the beach entrance told me of its importance, that it not only feeds shorebirds but collects sand and births dunes. It’s where the ocean meets the land. I approach it with new respect. It’s not the wrack of wrack and ruin, of decay and destruction. It’s a sign of life.

Gulf: part of an ocean that extends into land. A deep chasm, an abyss. A wide gap.

For a week I walked the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. I moved to its tides, trod sand beaten by its motion, found shells tossed by its waves.

Now I’m facing another gulf, the kind that yawns between vacations and regular life. No more palm trees and ocean breezes. No more living outside of time.

The jet’s descent left my ears so clogged that the world has been muffled and distorted since I arrived home last night. Until I walked outside and heard the cicadas this morning. Their clatter and racket pierced even my blunted hearing. They bridged the gap between vacation and real life. Listening to them, I knew I was home.

Last October, Hurricane Milton made landfall on Siesta Key, Florida, where I’ve vacationed for more than a dozen years. It sent storm water surging into bars and bungalows. Its 120-mile-an-hour winds downed trees, caused power outages and opened a pass that had been closed for 40 years.

It also reconfigured the beach, which is why visitors flock to this barrier island. Although accounts I’ve read say the damage was not as horrific as originally feared, I notice the difference as I walk the strand. There are channels where none existed before and rivulets to jump. My beach ambles require detours.

On the other hand, there’s a lagoon that’s made the place more fun. Now instead of swimming only in pool water, I can paddle around in a saltwater pond.

A door closed, a window opened? Something like that.

(Visitors enjoy Siesta Key’s most beloved attraction: the sunset.)