A couple of weeks ago, I went to the beach. It had been a while. It had, in fact, been too long. Too long since I had gulped salt air and embraced the breeze off the ocean. Too long since I had felt the graininess of sand on the back of my calves and the tingle of the sun on my bare shoulders. Too long since I had started the day without a to-do list.

Fortunately, my friend’s invitation is a standing one and when I texted, “Is this weekend good?”, she texted back, “Come on down.”

It was late morning when I crested the bridge in Darien and was greeted by the marsh rolled out like a carpet in the pale hues of toast and tea and young peas. The fingers of the Altamaha River lay flat and still. A dozen or so shrimp boats huddled together like a litter of puppies, their masts tilted at odd angles, their painted hulls flaking and faded.

And as my tires trump-thump-thumped their way across the bridge, the tableau of water and marsh and boats jostled a memory, one from deep in that place where our brains save images that have no significance in the moment, but which years later show up as totems, talismans, charms.

My Uncle John was a shrimper. His arms were Popeye-thick and his skin – after decades of sun exposure – bore deep lines. One year when I was around 12, he and Aunt Jean invited us down to the Blessing of the Fleet. The local Catholic priest stood on the dock, his long black cassock fluttering just a bit as the wind licked its way across the river, and pronounced a blessing over the season about to begin.

The only blessing I knew anything about was the one we recited before every meal, but even in my state of Protestant ignorance, I recognized that the moment was significant, that the gathering of the community to acknowledge its need for providential assistance as the boats set forth was, in fact, sacred.

I took two or three deep breaths as the memory dropped anchor and slipped away, but I found myself wondering if that sunny April day was when I first felt the magnetic pull of the coastline. Did the blessing mean for the seaworthiness of the boats, the bounty of the catch, the safety of the sailors overflow onto me? And was that what has continued to draw me back all these years – a hope that my own boat might be found seaworthy, that whatever my catch it might be bountiful, that despite the storms I might be kept safe?

For another 20 miles or so, I followed Highway 17, past a fish camp or two, through road construction that felt as though it has been going on forever and then up onto the Torres Causeway, the rainbow of concrete and steel that connects the mainland to St. Simons Island, where the live oaks fold over King’s Way like hands in prayer and the sea oats wave like every day is Palm Sunday.

Over the next 48 hours, I would satisfy my craving for salt air and sea breeze. I would walk in the thin space where land and sea converge. I would hear a blessing said over breakfast in sight of the ocean and supper in sight of the marsh. And I would get to see the faces and hug the necks of one, two, three ... eight, nine folks whose lives make mine better.

The Sunday sun was still climbing the sky when I left for home. It wasn’t a long trip, but it was long enough. Long enough to remember why I came. Long enough to once again receive a blessing for my one-woman fleet.