a genteel jungle

I am, as of yesterday afternoon, home from a full twelve days away from New York City. Twelve days! We vacationed on a South Carolina barrier island, a genteel jungle of palms, cypresses, pines, and live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. We drank Arnold Palmers and read books–real paperbacks, wavy-paged from the sea air–under a wide umbrella on the beach and body surfed in the Atlantic when the heat became too strong.

We pedaled brightly-colored cruiser bicycles past golf courses in the honeyed sunlight of the late afternoon, the verdant canopy overhead dappling the bike path. We biked past egrets and ibises wading in salt marshes and spotted a few languorous alligators in the lagoons peppering the island. Some evenings we returned to the beach–a wide, flat stretch of gentle shoreline with hard-packed sand, just right for walking–and let the breeze whip our hair around as the sky turned variegated shades of pastel.

Nighttime on the island was as dark as the inside of a pocket and thick with the sound of cicadas. Drives home from dinner were slow and deliberate, punctuated by exclamations of “Ooh, watch out, there’s a deer.” The animals, usually munching vegetation beside the road, were placid and seemed unlikely to dart without warning, suggesting that Southern deer are not as highly strung as their northern counterparts. (Ahem.)

We spent a pleasurable (if torrid) afternoon in Charleston, wandering the French Quarter in 90-degree heat and humidity that draped itself around everything like a velvet duvet. Later, we were revived by the air conditioning and crab beignets (and shrimp and grits, and, and…) at a restaurant called–what else?–High Cotton. We ate impossibly sweet peaches daily, and indulged in ice cream and pimiento cheese whenever the mood struck, which was often enough.

Twelve days is long enough to settle into the rhythms of a new place, to set aside familiar routines and rituals, and ask oneself, “What if this were home?” South Carolina isn’t home, of course. Couldn’t be, not really. We are inveterate Yankees (and Yankees fans) and so we have returned to a different jungle, our jungle: the concrete kind, with its unpredictable stone fruit and sirens–not cicadas–singing through the night air. And this morning, with tea in my favorite mug, Luis Bonfa on the stereo, and high rises looming in the overcast skies over Brooklyn, I am glad to be home.

It’s only mid-July; there are weeks and weeks of summer ahead. Let’s make the most of them.