It has taken me a full month to adjust to our new bearings on Hilton Head Island.  Even though we’ve always resided within Sea Pines Plantation whenever we have visited; and, even though over the past decade we have incrementally descended southerly from Marriott’s Grande Ocean where we first lingered here at the most northern end of Sea Pines (actually just outside the gate), then to Turtle Lane, Calibogue Club Villas, Beachside Tennis Villas, Cutter Court Villas (in Harbour Town) and South Beach Club, being now situate on Lands End (which as the name suggests is the most southern point of the island) there are very different highlights which distinguish the place.  For one, we’re on Braddock Cove which adjoins Calibogue Sound and the North Atlantic Ocean. On this flat, sea level island there is nothing of consequence impeding the wind from the ocean. We are being perpetually refreshed in spite of being otherwise highly insulated and removed.

Another ingredient of relevance to this alternative state is that, just down the block from here, we can see the iconic Hilton Head Island lighthouse which is the central feature of Harbour Town (whence the RBC Heritage annual PGA golf tournament derives). Yet as close as it is (and this is signals another critical term), in what has been my commensurately mounting immobility, getting there or almost anywhere beyond 8Kms of where we now reside is beyond my endurance.

Compounding this limitation is that, rightly or wrongly, I now confide my cycling to a tricycle which makes it very difficult to manoeuvre along the narrow cement pathways (pedestrian beach access) from inside Sea Pines to the ocean. While the effort is not insurmountable, it is purely exhausting.  My decomposed lower spine cannot take anything beyond dragging myself short distances (say, from here to the bathroom, or from here to the bedroom, or from here to the deck overlooking the Cove).  If I pretend to confine my tricycle to the narrow cement path I risk tipping off and falling (a custom I haven’t any desire to repeat more than the several times I have already done so). In the result I no longer get to the beach (except from a distant view at Tower Beach Club or Sea Pines Club) and, if I were to get on the beach (which I have in fact done), the effort required exceeds the reward.  I have concluded therefore that it is time for a change; or, more accurately, I have succumbed to old age.

Excerpt From
Michel de Montaigne. “The Essays of Montaigne — Complete

Contrary to what you may think, I do not see this as defeat. Instead it is an opportunity to enlarge upon and discover a new bearing; viz., that part of a machine that bears friction, the direction of movement from a fixed point, a structural part that supports weight, awareness and relevance, the way one conducts oneself. This metaphysical dialogue in which I so often engage is I believe my personal vernacular, a product of an undergraduate degree in philosophy and a graduate degree in law.  I will nonetheless acknowledge the exposure to flippancy and sophistry.

“A Westfalia ham makes a man drink; drink quenches thirst: ergo a Westfalia ham quenches thirst.” Idem

This elliptical confusion of course is an attack upon the deductive dialectic captured in the well known schoolhouse rendition, “If A = B and B = C then A = C. But the philosophic narrative is not thus completely tranquillized. The reality remains that I am limited to what I now experience on Hilton Head Island.  It has until this moment of investigation been a sore point so to speak, an inhibitor to what I now see was the past and a former way of regarding the present. Though I haven’t any wish to distinguish myself as a champion of any particular model, it does in fact please me to have rationalized my thinking in this matter sufficiently to quell the repetitive  anxiety for being unable to relive the past. Of course expressed in that manner, it is hardly an achievement of any particular merit. But surrounded by certain quotations it can amount to something approaching familiarity and regard.