TODAY’S VIEWPOINT

Cabin fever rears its ugly head

BY RHETA GRIMSLEY JOHNSON

I love my home and this dark Mississippi hollow. I love the quiet, at least what's left of the quiet at night when the chainsaw massacre ends. I love it and wouldn't want to leave it forever, not ever.

FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. -- I make the phone calls. First, to my parents. Then Aunt Juanita.

The national news the night before had shown terrible tornado tracks in their neck of the Alabam  woods. So I check.

The calls confirm my relatives are fine, exhausted from watching weather reports all day on a Sunday, but spared.

Next I pick my way around the pine tree plastered like Wile E. Coyote across my own gravel driveway. Weakened from pine-beetle infestation, the tall tree fell during high winds. It made a royal mess. It did, however, miss the roof and the pickup truck. Silver linings abound.

The weather today is sunny and almost springlike, and I see a few daffodils braving the cold.

But I can't bear to stay outside. I take a few steps before the deafening drone of saws and skidders pushes me back indoors.

A neighbor is clear-cutting his woods. Not pines, but hardwoods. Trees that won't grow back in a lifetime, felled in a few hours.

February lingers like a bad cold. I'm in a foul mood. I think about lines from a Buffett song called "Boat Drinks" in which Jimmy is yearningfor spring. "Twenty degrees and the hockey game's on ... This morning I shot six holes in my freezer. I think I've got cabin fever. Somebody sound the alarm."

I know the feeling. Except I'd love to shoot holes in a skidder.

When I get this way -- it happens to some degree every year -- I need a sea fix. I need to stare at the endless horizon from some dock or another. I need to see water, and lots of it. I need to eat boiled shrimp and crabmeat. I need to pick up a shell and shake sand from a blanket.

I love my home and this dark Mississippi hollow. I love the quiet, at least what's left of the quiet at night when the chain-saw massacre ends. I love it and wouldn't want to leave itforever, not ever.

But something in my soul also needs to see the ocean at least once a year. I need to know it is still there. And I don't have to have a view from a cruise ship or a fancy hotel. I've even given up the idea of actually living on the seashore. I just don't seem destined to get there.

I am satisfied with a long walk on any shore, in any state. And I need it now.

"Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses -- past the headlands
--
Into deep Eternity --
Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?"

The poet Emily Dickinson understood.

And she was the poster child for homebodies.

In my younger years, living in Alabama, I'd get the urge and simply throw a swimsuit and my flip-flops in a paper sack. I'd fill up the unreliable VW van with cheap gas and drive to the National Seashore at Pensacola to spend the night in a tent on the sugary sand.

Later, not quite as young, and living in Jackson, Miss., I'd throw a swimsuit and my flip-flops into a beat-up bag and fill up the reliable Ford with cheap gas. I'd drive to Gulfport or Biloxi and rent a cheap mom-and pop motel room. The next morning I'd catch the ferry to Ship Island and spend a day sunning and swimming.

Now, suddenly it seems, I'm not young at all. I couldn't find my swimsuit if there were some sort of swimsuit emergency. Gas isn't cheap. To fill up the van requires a second mortgage. The drive to the nearest beach takes about seven hours. The old mom-and-pop motels I loved mostly have been lost to casinos or hurricanes.

The antidote for winter no longer is within easy reach.

So I sit bundled up inside, like some helplessly old invalid, listening to the saws scream and the trees tumble and wondering what happened to the time.

If it weren't for memories, a basket of shells on the porch and a Buffett album, I'd go insane.

(c) 2008 Rheta Grimsley Johnson
Distributed by King Features Syndicate