CLIPS

Springing to Life

Into the Heart of the Season

Marisa Picker

The air was more than humanAnd the heat was more than hungryAnd the cars were square and spitting diesel fumes…
-Jack Johnson

The frigid quarter of winter has faded into memory and spring is flooding over the land and into the minds of city dwellers. Work days stretch longer and leisure is priority. While the season of rebirth flatters the city, forgoing the daily hubbub for the wild can be a revitalizing change.

Down Interstate 95, just north of Virginia Beach, a natural wonder waits. Temperate and subtropical plants mingle on the shores of the Chesapeake. Thick brush and twisted trees, which line the start of the beach, evoke thoughts of an untouched Serengeti. Seventy-five-foot sand dunes splattered with sun-dried vegetation lead the way to pristine waters.

First Landing State Park, just off of Interstate 64, is a genuine landmark that boasts over 2,888 acres of beach, forest, marsh and swampland. With campsites only steps from the beach, First Landing is the perfect destination for the fleeing urbanite.

Spanish moss clings to bald cypress trees. Beech and wild oak grow side by side. Acanthus, named after the nymph who fell in love with the sun god, are scattered throughout 19 miles of hiking trail.

Off fly shirts and shoes. The crunch crunch of pebbles under hard soles is replaced by the subdued grumble of stones under naked skin. Finally smooth sand. Liquidambar, otherwise known as sweet gum trees, decorate the campsites. Their mazes of branches and prickly clinging balls adorn the unique landscape and grip the bottoms of tender feet.

An occasional breeze filters in from the beach and cools the skin, quite a relief from the 80-degree sun. The distant voices of other campers cut through the whoosh of wind. The physical journey has ended but the mental journey has just begun.

With senses springing to life, our bodies give way to a foreign sensation. What is that? It’s hard to tell at first. Eyes begin to adjust to natural light. Ears forget the hum-zing of machines. It is freedom. It is life. It is not man versus nature but man as nature. Forgotten are the plastic beaches and the latex plants. Gone are autos and synthetic spaces. Man is not king here and we gladly take that in.

“And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down,” Jack London said, and I am not but a wild animal.

Day gradually fades into night and the intimate campsites are illuminated by the flicker of campfires. In courses the thrill of the untamed. How instinctive it becomes to abandon the complications of life. One man and one woman. We set up a tent. We build a fire. We wrap ourselves in blankets. We grill meat. With the sun no longer baking the earth, we let the fire bake our backs and welcome the cold night air on our chests. The fire billows and the smoke yields to the wind. After a time, we learn to forget the sand and dirt making its way in between our toes and under our fingernails. The only reminder we have of the life we’ve left behind are bottles of water. How different the world looks in firelight.

Through the brush and up onto the dunes, our feet are our only transport. The fire fades behind us. We can hear the dark waters churning far before us. The waxing moon reaches out for the sand but fails to embrace it. Stars dot the sky like a fortune’s-worth of little pearls.

“And there were so many fewer questions when stars were still just the holes to heaven,” Jack Johnson sings, and I am humming as I stare up into an incomprehensible void.

It begins to drizzle and we retire to our tent. This thin nylon shelter is all that separates us from the elements. Trickles of water slide down the sides of our simple abode. Beads of rain on the tent’s crown drum in a timeless rhythm that beseeches sleep.

With two days behind us, the reality of the journey home sets in. Back to the so-called real world means anxiousness. But which world is reality? The clarity that comes in nature, binding mind to environment or the unyielding muddle of the city’s in-and-out, here-and-there? Can we straddle the line?

I decided that when I would go back to the world down there I’d try to keep my mind clear in the midst of murky human ideas smoking like factories on the horizon through which I would walk…
-Jack London

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