Assateague Island Freedom, USA

The wind is chilly, blowing in from the Atlantic. Even though it’s May, and spring is hurrying on toward summer in the city, it hasn’t quite made it to the islands.

Chincoteague. Practically everyone in America has grown up reading about it, and about the wild ponies on neighboring Assateague Island. I pull my too-thin jacket closer as I walk down the deserted pre-tourist-season streets in search of a store open for business. The town looks rather forlorn, awaiting tourists and residents alike who have yet to arrive.

Finally, armed with coffee and a cinnamon roll, I start my rental car and spread out my map. From my quaint bed and breakfast, it’s not far to the bridge going to the wildlife refuge of Assateague. Hence the coffee and roll. I don’t like going over water in a vehicle meant for dry land, and I’d had plenty of that already in order to get to Chincoteague in the first place.

Once safely over the causeway, I begin to breathe a little easier. A glimmer of red and white catches my eye, so at a pull-off with a sign reading Lighthouse Trail, I park and get out. The trail is soft sand, leading me through tall, knarled pines that creak and sway in the sea breeze. Gradually the lighthouse appears again ahead. It gazes in weathered serenity back across the narrow channel toward Chincoteague. I look too, and realize that already the distant shops and houses seem like a different world. The quiet is absolute, interwoven but not broken by the water slapping playfully at the marshy shore and the age-old sighing of the pines.

On the walk back to my car, a woodpecker begins its rhythmic hammering close by, and I stop to watch. It occurs to me, with some surprise, that I’m in no hurry to go anywhere. I’m a city girl. I’m in a hurry on a good day. But not here.

The road continues on a narrow strip between marshy wetlands. It’s turning out to be a sunny day, so I roll down my windows. Before long, I’ve pulled off the side of the road and am ineffectually trying to shoo a plague of mosquitoes from the interior. When they have been evicted—mostly—I keep the windows firmly shut.

As I continue to drive, I begin glimpsing more than marsh through the pines. Finally I come within sight of the beach.

As a beach, it looks like just about any you’d find—though I prefer my beaches warmer. Reluctantly I take off my shoes and splash gingerly into the cold waves. Then I see what makes this beach—and this island—unlike any I’ve been to yet.

A group of ponies meanders from the woods, utterly ignoring the handful of early-season tourists raising cameras at them. One black and white foal breaks away to gallop with joyful abandon, straight into the surf. The rest of the group follow suit, turning the water to foam, tails and manes whipping in the wind.

This is how things should be, I find myself thinking. This is how animals were meant to live. Unconfined and unafraid, unconcerned with human affairs, able to roam woods and meadows, free to frolic in the ocean. And as the ponies wander, bodies glistening and manes dripping, down the beach, I wish I could spend my days the same way.

That evening, having had my fill of the seafood special from the lone open restaurant, I wander out to the dock I can see from my room. I wish I had planned to come a month later, for more reasons than my own comfort. The owner had said something about dolphins being common in the channel at certain times of the year, but not right now. The water is usually too cold until June.

I sit on the dock and watch the sun set behind the dark fringe of wooded island. Now it is that world of peaceful freedom which seems unattainably far. Today I’ve felt, for the first time in years, something mysterious and light—which I now realize was hope. Hope that freedom still exists, that strength matters, that meaning can still find me somewhere amongst the hectic fury of normal life.

As the island of Assateague slowly disappears into the shadows, I wonder wistfully if this is true. Or has this been a lovely dream, which will shatter when the onslaught of obligations returns. I stare into the calmly rippling waters, turned to molten gold, and dare them to answer.

A bigger ripple, a splash, and a gray head, almost invisible but for the wet gleam from its long snout. Then it’s disappeared, and the shimmering reflections make it impossible to see past the waters’ surface. But out of the dusk comes a sound, a clicking, that is almost like laughter.

And I laugh. Hope.

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