It was the best place. Kiawah Island, a barrier island off of South Carolina's Atlantic coast and about an hour away from the artsy, historic city of Charleston, was the best place I've ever visited. Home to the Kiawah Island Golf Resort, the 13.5 square miles of the island is only accessible by bridge and then by special permit provided to residents, vacationers with reservations, and guests on a special guest list, which is checked by security at the gated entrance to the island--the only entrance and exit available.
Residential homeowners, 98% white and 100% filthy rich, drive the one main road of the island, past the resort, to the northern part of the island, where their enormous mansions are protected from vacationers by a second gated security checkpoint, but if said vacationers are riding rented touring bicycles on a bicycle path, they can pass through without stopping to gape at the homes they'll likely never afford except in their quaint American dreams. So why, then, would I, a person so opposed to corporate monopoly and "the 1%" adore this place?
It's not a tourist attraction in the usual sense. It's a nature preserve. Through the Kiawah Island Natural Habitat Conservancy, there are protections on the marshes, the beaches, the flora and fauna. Life takes on a different stride here. It becomes that laid-back, Southern island life one might expect. Most people use bicycles to get around. The beaches are pristine and never overpopulated. Deer abound in the woods and marshes. Hundreds of species of birds are within sight or earshot at all times. Alligators share the bike paths which wind around their marshy ponds. Raccoons, foxes, opossums, bobcats, coyotes, rabbits, squirrels, snakes, toads, frogs, salamanders, loggerhead turtles, egrets, herons, eagles, and hundreds of other types of animal life abound on the island. There are forests, marshes, beaches, dunes, ponds, streams, and of course the ocean. Life slows down when sharing a vacation with nature.
My family has taken vacations to the resort island sparsely, as it is expensive but definitely worthwhile. We kayak, swim, read, laze about in the sun, ride bicycles, cook out, visit the resort restaurant where we ask the chef for his special recipe for sausage gravy. We go crabbing and catch blue crabs in the Kiawah River which we bring home and make into Lowcountry Boil. We sit on the balcony of our condominum at night and listen to the tree frogs while we wonder about the loggerhead turtles laying their eggs in the dunes.
We do not bother with time, cell phones, the internet, or television here. We do not ask if we can come and go. We simply come and go when we please. We spend all day outdoors exploring every inch of the island from the watchtowers we climb to peer over the marshes to the manicured lawns of mansions on the northern part of the island. This is where nature has become the sublime.
How, then, could this also be the place of my nightmares? How could this place have ruined my life? And why would I be so desperate to get back after several years?
I didn't know when we were there. It wasn't until hindsight showed me. He met someone there, someone he stayed in contact with behind my back as I pretended we would get married. And when I found out, I hated Kiawah Island more than I've ever hated any place, any nature, in my entire life. I never wanted to see it ever again.
Though I have no bad memories from that last visit, my emotions skewed the way I thought of the island. I despised the happiness it brought, the out-of-towners who pranced around in skimpy bikinis and stole boyfriends from long-term relationships. I despised the families with young girls, the homewreckers. The nature could not save the face of the island in my mind and heart. I never wanted to return ever again. How could such a paradise lead to the biggest emotional breakdown of my entire emotional-fractured life?
Now, a year and a half out from my discovery, on the brink of the biggest achievement of my life, I long to return. I want to save the island from my personal vendetta. I want to see it in its beauty, in its entirety. I want to separate the plants and animals of my heaven from the anger and hatred of my hell. I must face my fears. I think of the Litany against Fear from the Dune novels: "I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little death which brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Only I will remain, with the alligators and hawks, the saltwater sea breezes and the bivalves, the horseshoe crabs and the endangered loggerhead turtles. We will all lay our eggs in the dunes, protected by the lights-out ordinance so our creations can find their way to the sea.
