Saturday, May 21, 2022

Take a walk thru a Salvador Dali park at Jekyll Island, GA


Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA, April 12, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA, April 12, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA, April 12, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA, April 12, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA, April 12, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA, April 12, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA, April 12, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA, April 12, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie
Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA, April 12, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie



Salvador DalĂ­ (1904-1989), The Persistence of Memory, 1931, Museum of Modern Art



"Driftwood Beach" at Jekyll Island, Georgia is “consistently voted one of America’s ‘Ten Most Romantic Beaches.'”

Huh?  

Were the voters wearing blinders?  This is a "romantic beach"?  

I guess if you'd like a walk in a park by Salvador Dali like, maybe, in his The Persistence of Memory, it's fun!

Rather than “Driftwood Beach,” this is “Deadwood Beach,” since it’s piled up with…you guessed it, DEAD WOOD.

For fans of surrealism, this is a beach walk on a beautiful island through big dead hunks of gnarled wood which lay on the shore with their limbs splayed and tall dead  branches which extend towards the sky and cry "help me!" 

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's another example of what climate change has done.

The way it was explained to me (twice):  The encroaching ocean spray kills the trees which eventually topple over and lay in the sand, more wreckage from human practice and ignorance. 


That it's a lesson in the mistakes humans make is a good reason to recognize these tree skeletons, a sad example of human mistreatment of our home, our vessel, our Earth, leaving behind a venue of ghosts, nature's cemetery of tombstones which originated in the ground below.

This is romantic?  And celebrated? 

Why Mother Nature enabled these trees to grow nearer to the shore, susceptible to ocean waters, is a mystery, but the creation happened long before humans took hold and drove waters closer inland.

Today's reality does not conform with the colorful image marketed to visitors who come in droves to see nature’s "art" on the beach.  

Tiptoe through a Salvador Dali painting if you like, and have a Halloween wedding while you're at it.  Plenty of props abound in this land where monsters roam.


patricialesli@gmail.com

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