On a quiet island in a sound, safe from the raging Atlantic winds and currents that whipped rugged ancestors inland, emerald lawns and picket fences belie a certain wildness. Look up to admire cloud formations or lazy pelican flocks and the ditches around your feet may fill inexplicably with mosquito-infested swamp water. Why is the plump, bearded man at the seafood market wearing a hospital bracelet, and casts on both his scabby feet? "Mama get off the phone. There's a man here wants to buy some shrimp." Wander past the ranger's station, down a trail that even most locals don't seem to know, and you may find, somewhere beyond the stand of swaying pines, a forgotten beach, eroded, strange, like a miniature set for Westerns long abandoned to the elements. Or anyway that was what I saw. Recommended soundtrack: "The Last Cowboy" by Tin Hat Trio.
