I step off the boardwalk into the soft, white, fluffy sand. The clear, blue sky allows heat from the lower latitude sun on the Gulf Coast to heat the air to the typical near-sweltering temperature of mid-day on the Alabama coast.

Having grown up in this area I want to visit the beach again to see it pristine and clean before it becomes coated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon flow coughing up thousands of barrels of crude into ocean waters each day.

My feet are thrilled to be walking on the sacred sand and rejoice at the cool temperature of the saltwater. Then I stop and wonder–are the toxic dispersants wrapping tendrils of poison around my ankles as I stroll the beach?

I look offshore and there sits oil and gas rigs, dotting the horizon. The valuable resource being extracted at what cost?

As I walk I watch the waves rolling onto shore. Tiny coquina shells open their bivalve halves and stick their muscular foot into the sand to burrow into its wetness. I wonder what will happen if the oil finds its way here. What will the coquinas do…and the sandpipers running along the shore…and the great blue herons and pelicans…

My salty tears for the ocean and its creatures mix with the saltwater. I feel such loss for the almost 200 sea turtles washed ashore in Mississippi and Louisiana. It feels as if the entire Gulf is holding its breath, holding back sobs for the loss of life that mounts each day from the collosal oil flow spewing death from the depths.

“The environmental crisis is an outward manifestation of a crisis of mind and spirit. There could be no greater misconception of its meaning than to believe it to be concerned only with endangered wildlife, human-made ugliness, and pollution. These are part of it, but, more importantly, the crisis is concerned with the kind of creatures we are and what we must become in order to survive.”–Lynton K. Caldwell