We arrived in St. Croix around three this afternoon.
The atmosphere was a bit heavy, some weighty humidity. The wind carried in an air of salt — mnemonic zephyrs of days yester. Scents have an uncanny power to conjure old memories. Catch a whiff of the sea when you first step off a plane, or walk into the kitchen where an old recipe is cooking on the stove, and you’ll find yourself adrift in an ocean of evocation, cast away with the tides of yore.
Sounds too have this eerie power. As I type these words, I can hear the waves breaking over the rocky shore just beneath my window. It was in fact what possessed me to craft this very dispatch instead of posting the work of some of the more familiar names to Sporting Classics readers. As the waves rumble and splash and the salt permeates, the sun is in its descent. It is just above the mountain like some fiery nimbus, golden sparks dancing atop liquid undulations just before spilling like molten metal, vanishing on saturated rubble. I hear my eight year old self hollering at the sprawling sea, bearing my chest, challenging that vast, watery frontier. That space where wave violently encounters shore is an aquatic battlefield, revealing to many a child an inner explorer, hunter, fisher and warrior — the place that draws out that “barbaric yawp” Walt Whitman spoke of, erupting out the depths of ones gut and spirit.
The sun has just fallen behind the mountain top where now remains a pacifying prefatory glow. But the salt is still in the air and tide is still breaking.
Your memories are in the air, waiting to be inspired. Now, breathe deep — and listen closely.
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