The Life-changing Magic of Coastal Mississippi

It was a vivid November morning, and I had simply flown again from the countless shoreline of the Mississippi Gulf, my pores and skin nonetheless dewy from the humidity. I’d sat down at my neighborhood café in Charleston to write down this very essay, and borrowed a charger from a person ingesting an Americano. In return, I’d loaned him my pen. It was, you would possibly say, similar to every other day. 

However minutes later, life as I knew it was over. One thing clapped in my head and earlier than I may place my hand the place I felt the thunder, the ground and partitions have been above me. All the things was in orbit: the charger, the pen, my espresso and laptop computer. The solar burned my eyes and abruptly even the blue mild of my laptop was unbearably vivid. I attempted to show away however my neck was locked in place. I closed my eyes. Feeling round for my telephone, muscle reminiscence allowed me to textual content my husband an SOS. 4 hours later, on the ER, he was instructed I’d had a mind aneurysm. Hospital workers instructed him to collect himself, his issues, and our daughter and observe the ambulance to a bigger hospital’s neurological ICU.

At present, one yr later, I’ve fought to regain my power, my means to write down, and my sense of self. I stay with short-term reminiscence loss. I sit right here now, studying the phrases I’d began to draft on that life-changing day, and understand many sentences fail to make sense, as a result of they have been being written as my mind was being flooded with blood. 

However that is what coastal Mississippi taught me: that to be artistic is to hope. These 4 days spent touring the 30-odd glowing miles from Bay St. Louis to Biloxi and Ocean Springs after which again are my final long-term reminiscence. The expertise would information me in restoration. Listed here are the issues I’ll always remember.

When Michelle, my Lyft driver, pulled up exterior Gulfport-Biloxi Worldwide Airport, she greeted me like I used to be an outdated good friend, and insisted on loading my suitcases into her trunk. “Let me show you how to,” she mentioned, then joked, “What you bought in right here? One million {dollars} for the on line casino?” 

“If I win, I’ll share with you,” I instructed her. 

“No you received’t,” she laughed, like we’d grown up collectively. 

We rode the 40 minutes to my first cease in Bay St. Louis quipping backwards and forwards. Michelle had encyclopedic data of what had been made and remade on the coast after every of the hurricanes — most notably Katrina, which decimated this a part of Mississippi in 2005. She confirmed me new boardwalks that join glittering resorts and mom-and-pop outlets and narrated the sustained cycles of destruction and rebuilding. 

In all places I turned, I noticed creation, re-creation, and a heart-first, full-throttle philosophy of getting on with life. I began to consider that, attempt as others would possibly to scale back coastal Mississippi to a story of survivorship, this place was outlined not by the calamities it had overcome, however by the openness it maintains, despite the storms.

Michelle dropped me off on the Pearl Lodge, a boutique property close to the marina in Bay St. Louis. I had a late lunch and wandered round city in the hunt for a memento store. Many shops have been within the technique of closing after I arrived, the house owners sweeping or rolling up rugs. And but — there was that openness once more — most shopkeepers mentioned “Are available, it’s alright.” 

Morning got here, and with it the sounds of seabirds cawing and boats slicing by the water exterior. From my balcony, I watched nautical flags and banners for charity occasions flapping within the breeze. It was November, and most properties hadn’t but taken down their Halloween decorations. Celebrations are huge in Bay St. Louis, I discovered as soon as I sat down with Ashley Planchard, a supervisor of the Mockingbird Café, for a chat over a house-recipe chai and a cinnamon loaf. The café had turn out to be the city’s public lounge after Katrina, Planchard instructed me. She has an outrageous love for her hometown and its festivals — she attends the city’s Dolly Ought to Pageant (a tribute to Ms. Parton) and Frida (Kahlo) Fest, which the café additionally sponsors, and is an annual participant within the “Witches Stroll” on the Saturday earlier than Halloween. I regretted having come every week too late, with out my tween daughter — my very own mini-witch. However Planchard assured me subsequent yr’s stroll could be right here earlier than we knew it. 

Whereas she continued to inform me in regards to the city’s rituals, I multitasked (one of many final instances my mind could be able to this feat), jotting notes whereas scheming a couple of potential return with my lady. And that’s after I knew that I’d made a reference to the place, which is to say, its individuals. Isn’t that what a worthwhile vacation spot is? A spot you’d like to return again to with a beloved somebody out of your life — somebody whose worldview you’re serving to to form? 

The worldview in Bay St. Louis was clear: destruction is bound to go to us on this life, irrespective of who we’re or the place we stay, and the one method to climate it’s to have an open hand and borrow from our neighbors. To remake life many instances over, if we should.

Subsequent, I ventured east to the town of Biloxi to see not what I may discover, however what may discover me. Once I arrived for lunch at McElroy’s Harbor Home, a seafood joint proper on the Gulf, my gaze alighted on a fleet of close by shrimp boats. 

I used to be born within the Philippines and moved to South Carolina in my early twenties, and after I set out on this journey, I’d mentioned to the wind that I needed to satisfy fellow Asian Southerners. And Mississippi as soon as once more rewarded me. I wandered over to the docks, and there I met Kim Pham, a shrimper from Vietnam, who was happy to be taught the place I’d grown up. Pham had been a refugee within the Philippines within the late Nineteen Seventies, after the struggle in her personal nation. 

We talked about her journey from Vietnam to the Philippines to Atlanta, and at last to Mississippi. She’d labored at a manufacturing unit in Biloxi till it shifted operations to Mexico, then turned to shrimping. She instructed me that the previous couple of years had been the toughest in her 20 years within the business. Now, she mentioned, her youngsters have been grown and she or he deliberate to observe them wherever they go, be taught a brand new ability in yet one more new commerce if she needed to, reinvent herself once more. As I used to be stepping off the boat, Pham practiced the Francophone syllables of my identify and gave me a thumbs-up. 

I’ll always remember that gesture. In truth, I repeated it after I wakened after the surgical procedure that saved my life, and my husband mentioned the one phrase I wanted to listen to: Cinelle. 

Pham wasn’t the one inspiring lady I met in Biloxi. I additionally took time to go to the ceramics heart on the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Artwork, the place I talked to a podcast producer and potter named Georgia Sparling. In the course of the pandemic she, like many individuals, boomeranged again residence to Mississippi, and threw herself right into a life stuffed with healthful actions like kayaking and crafting. 

I discussed that I needed to see the Pascagoula River. Sparling was on the prepared, calling up her kayaking group, the Pascagoula Paradise Paddlers. By that night, she’d organized for me to have a day on the river with two of her associates, brothers Eric and Brian Richards.

With them that subsequent day, I discovered to say bah’ou as a substitute of bye-you, and that wooden handled with brackish water will face up to a storm higher than something you should buy at House Depot. Cans of beer have been popped open and raised, and whereas one of many brothers prompt entertaining us together with his bluegrass-y tenor, all of us determined the sounds of pluff mud and Spanish moss swaying within the breeze was music sufficient.

Due to my harm, I’ve misplaced a lot: sensory tolerance, bodily stamina, psychological focus. However I’ll all the time have these episodic recollections from the journey that flip off my mind’s “worry mode” virtually robotically. My journey to Mississippi, with all its serendipitous interactions, pulled me away from my home and journalistic routine, focusing my cognitive assets on all issues peripheral but important: my Lyft driver’s jokes; the diva power of Dolly and Frida; the kindness of strangers like Sparling and Pham. I got here to really feel that these happenstance social connections are what activate the reward circuits of our brains — particularly once we’re at our weakest. 

After my aneurysm, the medical doctors and nurses requested me the identical query a number of instances a day for weeks: “Are you able to inform us who you’re?” My reply modified each time, save for this one: “I’m a author who makes associates on travels.” After mind surgical procedure, no matter you’re capable of recall turns into your new self. I used to be relearning. My therapist places it this manner: you turn out to be what you could have, not what you’ve misplaced. 

Ocean springs was my final cease on the journey. I stayed at Gulf Hills Lodge & Resort, a 57-room waterfront property that was initially in-built 1927 and was being restored to its former glory, having been partially destroyed by Hurricane Camille in 1969 (and, after being rebuilt, destroyed a second time by a fireplace in 1974). It fell into neglect over the next a long time, however reopened within the fall of 2023, a couple of weeks earlier than my go to. 

The brand new house owners labored meticulously to revive a property the place Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and Jayne Mansfield as soon as swam, waterskied, and sundowned with cocktails in hand. As a part of the restoration course of, the group reached out to former company and requested what they remembered. Most replied not with architectural particulars, however interactions. There was a teen, now a retiree, who’d frolicked with a younger Elvis, who cherished staying in Villa 9 within the early Fifties. It’s tales like this that Condrey and the group used to reclaim what the property had.

On the close by Bozo’s Too, I met up with my pricey good friend Rénard’s household for lunch. Though he now lives in Charleston, Rénard had organized for me to satisfy up together with his mom, sister, and niece, who stay close by. The three of us shared a plate of hush puppies and chatted about Rénard’s daughter, who’s finest associates with mine. We swiped by images of this era of Southern ladies of coloration, who’re so very a lot merchandise of the coasts that raised them, in addition to their moms’ immigrant heritage. 

Simply as I had initially of my journey, I used to be once more plotting a return with my lady to the pristine white sands and full embrace of the Mississippi Gulf. At present, that want resurfaces. However journey is more durable now. There are assistive devices to deliver, logistical concerns to be made. My medical doctors inform me to set small targets, and to depend on different individuals for assist after I want it. By the point this story goes to print, I’ll have outstretched an open hand many instances, and obtained a lot care in return.

I’ll have, for inspiration, regarded up well-known mind aneurysm survivors and see what they’ve achieved. Sharon Stone graced the Saturday Evening Stay stage once more. Emilia Clarke went full Targaryen within the sequence finale of Recreation of Thrones. Joni Mitchell picked up her guitar and stored making music. 

As for me, I’m right here, remembering what coastal Mississippians taught me. I’m right here, about so as to add a interval to a sentence. I’m right here, writing once more. 

The place to Keep

Gulf Hills Lodge & Resort

Beloved by celebrities within the Fifties, this 57-room waterfront property in Ocean Springs was not too long ago restored and reopened.

Pearl Lodge

This charming 59-key inn in Bay St. Louis has a classy seafood restaurant, Thorny Oyster.

The place to Eat

Bozo’s Too

Good for a lunch cease in Pascagoula, this no-frills spot serves po’boys, steamers, and a loaded Bloody Mary with an oyster, shrimp, and crawfish garnish.

McElroy’s Harbor Home

A Gulf-side Biloxi restaurant with crab desserts, gumbo, fried clams, and extra.

Mockingbird Cafe

This Bay St. Louis establishment serves Southern brunch classics like biscuits and gravy, plus sandwiches, salads, and pastries.

What to Do

Gulf Islands Nationwide Seashore 

Stretching 160 miles between Florida and Mississippi, this nationwide park web site protects barrier islands, marshes, and wildlife. 

Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Artwork

Frank Gehry designed this establishment, which focuses on Mississippi ceramist George Ohr and different regional potters.

Pascagoula River Audubon Heart 

Get out on the water with a kayak or paddleboat rental to search for fowl species like magnolia warblers and brown pelicans at this heart.

A model of this story first appeared within the February 2025 difficulty of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “Let It Wash Over You.”