a handful out of a million

Here are just a scant handful of the million and one reasons my entire soul will miss Charleston until the day I return (and I will return-I firmly maintain that this is an ending, an interlude, but not, nor could ever be, the end)



Because we have trees like this.



Same tree. It's just that huge.



And we have trees like this.



And a few miles away we have a place like this. And every time I come here, unfailingly, there is a moment where I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with that cool, sweet, salty ocean air, and realize that this is breathing. That inhale, exhale thing I do the rest of the time-that's merely a pale imitation. I can say with absolute certainty that the only time I truly, honest to God, breathe, not just to stay alive or because my body involuntarily does it, but breathe in the way breathing is meant to be, is when I'm by the sea.