CUMBERLAND ISLAND, GEORGIA, USA / 2016
With a population of fewer than twenty thousand, St. Marys is a sleepy southern town known as the embarkation point for Cumberland Island.
The drive down from Savannah is short—only one and half hours. Cute lodgings abound. Carrie and I rent a cozy, two-bedroom cottage stocked with all the essentials. It has a lovely porch, even a pair of bikes.
As we did in Savannah, we slide comfortably into our own rhythms, orienting ourselves in ways that resonate with each of us. I cycle around town; Carrie finds a secluded spot to do yoga by the water. Later, I wander main street and lurk in the cemetery, listening to birds and studying cracked tombstones until nightfall, when I splash home through the tide as it creeps stealthily up the side streets.
I first glimpsed Cumberland Island in a magazine piece about JFK Jr. And Carolyn Bessette's wedding. The photos of the island captivated me. They revealed an alluring, mysterious landscape—a wild tangle of trees slung between narrow expanses of windswept, golden sand; the natural habitat of wild horses, reptiles, winged and shelled creatures of all kinds. I knew that it was a place I needed to see for myself one day.
My introduction to the island begins at Cumberland Island National Seashore Visitor’s Center in St. Mary's where a ranger gives a short orientation before leading our small group to the Cumberland Queen, the ferry that will float us 45 minutes downriver to the island. Onboard, I chat with Tom, a structural engineer from Charleston who often visits the area. He reminds me of the importance of having two things when spending a day on the island: water and insect repellant. Luckily, the tiny concession stand on the boat sells both.
We land at Sea Camp Dock and I rent a bike that looks like a 1950's beach cruiser and handles like an 8-year-old's BMX. Upon this fine machine (legs pumping wildly, arms stretched like Gumby), I ride up and down the palm-fringed dirt road that bisects the heart of the island, then set out for Grayfield Beach where I attempt to portage a rust-colored pool of water to reach the ocean and am promptly swathed in a cloud of biting flies. Oops. Tattooed with welts, I retreat to the tree line and douse myself with the bug spray Tom so wisely advised me to buy, but that I had somehow neglected to apply. Maybe I should go south, I think. To the Dungeness ruins—the abandoned shell of the once-opulent Carnegie estate.
*
At the gates of the Dungeness mansion, I feel embraced by the past. I ponder what the majestic home might have looked like before its fiery demise in 1959 and
I circle the ruins—fractured brick bones of once regal chimneys and walls, the vaporous notion of turreted rooms and pillared halls hovering in the air like ghosts.
All that remains today is a smattering of statues and jagged foundations.
I dismount, roll my bike over the grass to an empty picnic table that stands beneath the shade of a massive oak; the perfect place for a picnic lunch. After I have eaten, I lay back and stare up at the dome of large, moss-draped branches. A drone of insects rises up, hypnotic and soothing, like the evening sounds of summer camp or dusk in an Iowa cornfield. I nearly doze off when the binaural swell crescendoes in a sudden wave, cresting and plummeting with such a force that it gives me chills. I sit up and switch my field recorder on. As the sonorous refrain continues, I lay motionless in the sweltering heat, letting my ears and pulse rise and fall on the tide of their chorus.
Eventually, I retrieve my bike and pedal down a palm-lined slope, past abandoned out-buildings and over damp, rutted earth to the tidelands where, waves of tiny crabs scuttle in a giant, glittering carpet. At the marsh's edge, I stand at a cusp of trees, conscious only of the thing that I had come so far to see—a band of wild horses, standing in the loam, feeding. Three adults and one foal. I watch them through the shimmering grass, lost in a sort of joyful ether as more of their band approaches from the shore. The lead horse walks with a chieftain's gate, a bright, white bird riding on its back. They nicker at me and I give them a wide birth but stay, ensconced by the trees. Watching them, I am struck by a deep sense of wellness, a heightened appreciation for my present state, my place in creation.
I remain for some time. Just me, the windy marsh, and eight wild horses.
Carrie and I find each other at Sea Camp Beach late in the the cloudless afternoon. She had arrived on a different boat, wandered the trails and found an idyllic place to soak in the golden heat. We talk nonstop on the ride back to the mainland about the timeless quality of the island, the mysterious dirt roads, pensive ruins, the horses.
At a Greek restaurant near the St. Marys marina, we collapse at a table, burnished by the sun, still buoyant from the day. The waiter brings dinner—gyros, iced tea, cucumber salad, and we continue to talk, stopping only when dusk begins to settle around us in an indigo haze.
We pedal home in the near-dark, gravel spitting out from beneath our wheels, unseen creatures rustling in the branches overhead. I hum the refrain of a long-lost song, something about humbling myself in the sight of the Lord. It has been a long time since I felt so loose and unburdened, without a care in the world. Home, for a time, is St. Marys—town of unbidden tides, the purple dust of night falling on church steeples, and the sad, curious cackle of graveyard birds.
