A profound awakening, before I was a teenager, was when I had the incredible opportunity to take many vacations to the lowlands, the tidewater marshes, estuaries and beaches of North and South Carolina, USA. You started to smell the spartina, the sting of salt in your nose, somewhere between Columbia and Charleston. The Spanish moss and blackwater swamps hypnotized you, you became entranced with thoughts of alligators and pirates and even beyond, to musings on the early soup of life.

There is something about this geography, the solid and liquid ratios always changing, the light, so bright and dazzling, yet just around the corner plunging you into mysterious darkness, that mesmerizes you, draws you in, and makes you return again and again.

Thanks go to my parents for those early trips.