A Memorable Meal, and Magical Moments

A full pound of rock Shrimp, grilled in butter with garlic and lemon,
served over a bed of broad noodles.

Lightly steamed fresh Brussels sprouts on the side.

Accompanied by a salad of fresh, organic mixed greens, with wedged avocado, baby zucchini, walnuts, feta cheese, and cherry tomatoes, topped with a sesame ginger dressing.

Served with a bottle of Californian cabernet sauvignon.

For dessert, half a ripe papaya each, topped with French Vanilla ice cream.

A table over looking secluded sand dunes on the Gulf of Mexico.

And all for under $20 !!

It’s true, …honest.

I will admit that I was the one who had to shell and clean the thirty or so shrimp, and of course Donna was the chef extraordinaire; but it was the most amazing meal nonetheless. Many times I, and we, feel so blessed by what we have. In many ways, we lead a very simple life, and our wants and needs are not so great that they can’t be easily met by the means we have.. But my oh my, do we eat well. So many times we realize that we would be hard pressed to find a restaurant that could match what we have at our own table at home…wherever home may be. Thank you thank you Ms. Donna, you are truly a genius of the three burner trailer stove.

Donna herself had a truly magical moment the following day. It was cold and blowy out, but Donna suited up and decided to venture north up the beach, away from the camping area and onto the ten mile stretch of sand reaching to the end of the peninsula. I stayed behind and took the chance to try to catch up on my writing. We had been away from power and a settled place for days, so I wanted to take this opportunity to get some time at the keyboard, and keep the dawg company at the trailer. I got lost in my thoughts, the dawg slept peacefully because we had a long bay side walk in the morning, so it wasn’t until she returned that I realized Donna had been gone for almost three hours.

She looked exhausted but beautiful. She was windswept, and sun burned, but she also had a special glow and smile that made me realize something special had happened. “Lance,” she said. “You know how sometimes I have these magical things just happen to me. Well, I just had another one. Let me tell you about it.”

She was several miles up the beach, out of sight of anyone and anything manmade, when she saw way up in the sky, way off in the distance, a swirling shape of silvery spots. She quickly realized she was seeing a large flock of birds, but what they were, and what they were doing, she couldn’t figure out. There must have been sixty or seventy of them, just gliding and circling, individually totally random, but moving nonetheless as a unified group. As they slowly moved closer, she recognized that they were snow geese, and that the sun shining off their all white bodies was making them glow eerily. They were soaring around each other, not flapping their wings, but moving as a slowly spiralling group. As they circled, at times the black ends of their wings would show, making them appear as dark spots, then they would almost vanish as they turned again, then would flash bright as their white bodies again reflected the sun. For ten or fifteen minutes, they slowly circled in an ever changing orb of gliding, crisscrossing bodies. The wind was strong that day, so the mass of them came closer and closer to where Donna lay, transfixed by their patternless, yet unified actions. And then suddenly, they emerged into the traditional flying “V” of a flock of migrating geese. For a few moments, they headed into the wind, and then just as suddenly, broke down again into a gliding, circling sphere of bodies. The headwind was too powerful; the strongest bird wasn’t in the front; the timing was not quite right; the energy they were accumulating for starting the next leg of their flight wasn’t yet at its peak; who knows why, but they returned to their circling swooping holding pattern. More minutes went by until, poof, they again formed into their flight pattern, this time a long V that had a short secondary V at the end of each leg. They headed into the wind, and in only seconds honked off, and were soon lost to sight. The time was now, the lines were right, the energy was perfect, and they were gone.

Donna described it so clearly, I could almost see it myself. I had never heard of anything like this, but I’m sure it must happen. And then, two days later, as we were leaving the park and had stopped in town, off in the distance, we saw it happening again. It was everything that Donna had described, and more. It was hypnotizing, watching their movements. They were acting individually, but still moving as a group. They reminded me of various things…water starting to boil in a glass beaker in chemistry lab, when you rapidly stir the water ,the bubbles forming and circling in a cyclonic swirl….Tiny garden spiders that have just hatched, and are emerging as hundreds of tiny tiny bodies, all connected by invisible webs, descending as an elongating mass, and then all yo-yoing back up when disturbed or touched…points of light flickering on and off, seen at a great distance, when the bodies reflect the light white, then they disappear, then the wings flash dark…It was surreal when they got almost out of sight…a shimmering mass of tiny points of light, ever changing so slightly, but always moving as a group. It seemed out of this world, inexplicable, mesmerizing. I understand now why sometimes UFO’s are written off as “a flock of geese.” That’s what these were, and they definitely were an Unidentified Flying Object, if I hadn’t seen them first at a recognizable distance. I never got to witness the climax of this holding pattern, when the signal somehow is communicated, and they all fall into line, and start the next leg of their journey, one long being, powered by hundreds of beating wings. But what I saw, and what Donna described, will stay with me forever. It was truly magical, one of those usually unseen miracles of Nature, another blessing given to us, because we took the time to slow down and be aware of the wonder of life.