When I played bridge online at the MSN zone, my long-standing partner was curdledteacher. The owner of the screen name turned out to be Mark and Paul and they invited me to Mobile for a visit. Two of them! No wonder they kept up with my lightning typing skills when we chatted as we played.
Each morning when we rose, we would sit in their light-filled kitchen and drink rich coffee while we planned the day. An odd thing about the South: every place you want to go is 'oh, 'bout an hour' away.
One day I chose Pensacola from their offered list.
Probably, the Rockies were the only place I visited on that ten-month trip that hit me as hard as Pensacola.
The Rockies' soaring peaks are a challenge to a puny human. Their scope humbled me, the beauty made me cry in amazement.
Pensacola is a gentler shock, but still...
I had tried to envision the Rockies when I read about them or saw photos. I had some idea of what to expect, even though the actuality was far beyond my most vivid imaginings.
I had never even dreamed a place like the beach at Pensacola.
If you talk to a Southerner about Pensacola, they will say something like, Yes, it's pretty, isn't it?
Familiarity breeds understatement.
Before Pensacola, we stopped in Fairhope, AL, originally an artist's colony. With a foresight that is rare, the founders had ensured that eyesores, if they exist there, are tucked away out of sight. Clean, bright, hopeful, like most of the South, sets a pace that gives you the sense of having all the time in the world.
At Fairhope's pier there was a man fishing with a net, something I had never seen in land-locked Pennsylvania.
I chatted with him a bit and asked if he minded that I watch. 'Course not, ma'am. A man of few words, he was kind enough to explain the procedure.
It's called 'net casting', done with a cast net, a circular netting. I would estimate that his net, fully extended, spanned forty feet.
He put one foot on the bottom rail of the pier and with the sure graceful movements of someone who knows what they're doing, flipped the layers of net back and forth, creating accordion pleats that piled up on his raised thigh. When the net was folded, he raised his arms and threw it over the water. It settled, sewn-in weights both assisting his aim and drawing the net downward to find the fish.
As I watched he harvested probably a dozen good-sized fish a foot long or better. 'Do you sell the fish?'
'Oh, no,' he answered. 'I give 'me away. It's a hobby.'
I left him folding his net yet again.
We drove on to Pensacola.
Words really do fail me. The sugar sand is soft and dazzlingly white under the Florida sun. Wild sea oats toss in the breeze off the water, which is an improbable rich emerald green (caused by underwater plants) for the first fifty feet and then with a sharp dramatic demarcation becomes a rich sapphire. The water appears to be lit from beneath and must surely be home to mermaids.
Seagulls wheel and cry overhead against a sky so blue only the sapphire water could compete.
It's Paradise, plain and simple. I did not see them, but I know unicorns were grazing the dunes.
I did google. I would like it there. 'The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings!' .@walabby Magnificent.
