I never tire of their awkward bills or kamikaze dives into the Gulf Coast. They fly in tight formations across the Gulf Coast barrier islands, sometimes coasting within a few feet of balconies.
Spending the holidays on the Alabama shore has not coalesced into tradition. Every step, every breeze still feels too foreign, too new and pleasant.
The restaurant menus vary slightly with the same few ingredients. In a few days we worked through grouper, trout, cod, shrimp, scallops and cobia, all the while populating bars skating through the off-season.
I crave the beach for unusual reasons. I could never venture to the beach sit under an umbrella, emerging to sun parts of me usually rendered beluga white, By the beach, I mean the atmosphere the Gulf fosters in the off-season. The beaches lack crowds in winter, even if the temperatures suit transplanted Northerners fine.
Schedules forced me to depart early and Nancy to fly into Pensacola. As I left, a rainstorm pounded Nashville, the drops only relenting minutes before I crossed the winding border of Tennessee and Alabama. The sun beat down the rest of the trip southeast toward the Florida Panhandle.
Upon arrival, I embarked upon a long walk under dim fingernail light. Despite the light pollution from the condo towers, the skies opened up, first with Orion, then more constellations and finally a dusty haze of Milky Way. Completely alone at that hour, I wore a headlamp to avoid any unexpected company the currents washed in. The purple flags for dangerous marine life fluttered at beach entrances throughout the weekend. After a close call last year, I feared a barefoot step onto a Portuguese man-o-war.
The next afternoon I opened the patio door and lied down to read. The low roar of waves breaking ended any reading and pushed me into deep naps.
Even with 20-story condo towers looming over the beach, nothing can keep away the shore birds and other fauna. One evening I walked the lonely beach until sun flattened into a fat oval and drifted off. The birds quieted. The fishermen fled. The alabaster sand squeaked under my bare feet. Nobody walked the beach. The solitude below the condo towers struck me.
Not that I should trust my eyes or ears. As dusk gripped the horizon and pink trails streaked the clouds, I heard splashes just offshore. That pod of marine mammals feeding soon revealed itself as a group of surfers in wetsuits holding out for bigger waves. After last year's phantom dolphin spotting, the mostly placid currents left no doubt to their presence in 2017. The blackened backs and fined cut fine swaths through the waters, as they dove into unseen fish schools. On several mornings they coasted a few hundred yards offshore, circling tightly as they fed.
But they didn't hold a candle to the cow-nosed rays that congregated on several mornings. At first resembling tangled black clouds a few feet from shore, they fed below the birds, the occasional fin tip breaching the surface.
We swung through the park of boardwalks, oat grass and sands shifting around boulders at Perdido Pass, the entrance to Bayou St. John.
I made a few forays into Pensacola, mostly for Christmas gifts and an attempt to find an excellent beer store that no longer existed (I craved their intimidating lineup of Mikkeller beers and wanted some craft ciders for Nancy).
The most important trip was when I picked up Nancy at the airport, where plane after plane landed with Christmas travelers. Among the easiest airports I ever crossed, I picked her up and we zoomed toward breakfast on Palafox Street. I arrived almost 90 minutes before she landed, huddling in the short-term lot and opening all the windows, the Gulf breeze scouring my car and cooling its sweaty occupant.
We met Nancy's friend at The Ruby Slipper, a New Orleans institution that has outposts across the Gulf. A signature mimosa and some form of eggs Benedict filled us for the rest of the day.
On Christmas Eve, we visited The Wharf, a huge multi-use complex with shops, restaurants bars and an amphitheater. Over beers and light meals we followed a dozen football games.
Tantalizing as the 15th floor views were, the full beach experience required a run through the waves, which we achieved on Christmas Eve. When the water grew too chilly, we turned to laps in the indoor pool.
On Christmas, someone scraped the outline of a snowman into the sand, the most visible sign of the holiday aside from a few decorated balconies. The currents grew placid. Sandbars rose where the waves crashed in previous days.
As Christmas groaned into the afternoon, we visited those sandbars, infinitely more interesting than the bars up and down the barrier islands. The pipers chattered as we walked close but allowed us to share the sandbar with them, content to leave their prints in the muddy, ephemeral island. By sunset, the flock would retreat, and the waters would churn enough to reclaim the sandbars.
The wind cleared out the skies for a dazzling if cold round of Milky Way observation, bright as the sky glowed the night I arrived. On this night, the light pollution of beachfront towers could not blot out a galaxy.
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