HURRICANE REDUX
The weather after a hurricane is always spectacular. Usually this goes unappreciated by those without power. The humidity dips and the air is scrubbed clean.

Last night, after dinner and before tubby time, my daughter and I were walking along the stretch of beach between the two seawalls. Her little feet padded into the soft sand, freshly deposited by the storm surge of two days ago. We maneuvered past stumps and assorted flotsam and jetsam. Then I spotted the crab trap.

Crab traps are posted like sentinels at regular intervals along our bay. This one had washed the 100 or so yards in and was sitting half submerged in the sand. Inside, about a dozen nervous blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus, literally "savory swimmer") were clinking about. They had been out of the water for awhile but blue crabs can tolerate that. I called my daughter over and she watched rapt as I opened the side mesh and started emptying the savory swimmers back into the bay.

As I jiggled and bounced the crabs from the upper compartment of the trap into the lower and finally out the opened side, I thought about the scenes of the day. Flooded roads in New Orleans (where I had the best soft-shelled crab off of Bourbon Street just a few months ago), the wholesale destruction of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Such a tragedy--somehow this small act, rescuing crustaceans from a wayward trap, seemed to ease my troubles.

The last, and one of the biggest crabs, clung stubbornly to the top mesh. "Come on partner," I said quietly. He no doubt had suspicions as to my motives. That comes with the territory when you are savory. I turned the trap and positioned him in the water along the bay's edge. That appeared to prove my intentions to him. He let go and slid down through the chamber and out. Silently he and his fellow ex-prisoners moved out into deeper water. I put the trap high up the beach, out of the way of the tide. Whoever owns it is welcome to it--they couldn't have gotten to the crabs in time though; and the savory swimmers should know that tomorrow they're fair game again.

We padded back up to the seawall and left sandy footprints down the road toward home.

My Aunt Jessie made the best gumbo. She knew that blue crabs were a crucial part. Their flavor does the bugaloo down in there with the other spices, coaxing a final taste out of everyone. Pieces of their claw and shell should be found in any authentic gumbo.

The watercolor comes from the artist Walter Anderson. He was an eccentric philosopher and painter who traveled in a ridiculously small boat off the coast of Mississippi to Horn Island to paint and ease his troubled mind. His book Horn Island Logs is full of wisdom hard won from a man not afraid to wade chest deep through a marsh to find and paint wildlife. It was his way of affirming the beauty of nature, by bearing witness. A museum of his works is (was?) located in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.