'You Gotta Love It'

I was watching my children play in the surf of Hilton Head Island when the tourist came up to me, decked from head to toe in neon-hued “I Heart Hilton Head” T-shirt, hat and wristband. Somehow, despite the electric blaze of his getup, I hadn’t noticed him walk up to me until we were practically shoulder to shoulder.

I was only made aware of his presence when he breathed in quite loudly through his nose, sighed deeply and exclaimed, “Ah, the salt life. You gotta love it.”

I’m being completely forthright with you – he actually walked right up to a stranger and said that. I glanced at him briefly; he couldn’t have been more than 16. Even if he hadn’t walked up to me and said that, he’d still be the platonic ideal of a tourist. A tourist with an unusual amount of enthusiasm for “the salt life,” whatever exactly that was.

“And where are you visiting from?” I asked, trying to play the part of the gracious host.

“Oh man, I live here!” he chuckled without a hint of irony.

I gave him a very long, very deliberate look, lingering on the T-shirt, but I said nothing.

Because I’ve been that kid more times than I could count. I was fortunate to travel quite a bit when I was younger, and everywhere I went I imagined that being the place that I lived. I saw myself growing into adulthood in a crooked house along Lombard Street in San Francisco, in a swamp shack off the New Orleans bayou, in an alpine cabin overlooking a cliff in Switzerland and even, improbably, in one of those second-floor apartments along Main Street USA at Walt Disney World (turns out those are fake).

Eventually, I settled on a small condo just a short walk from the beach on Hilton Head Island (which became a suburban house just across the bridge when I started a family). Regardless, my travels shaped how I wanted to live my life. And everywhere I went, I was that kid that pretended he lived there.

I feel like a lot of us do that, in some sense. Some of us bloom where we’re planted, some of us never really set down roots, following the breeze around the world like dandelion seeds, but the rest of us travel to figure out where we belong. And every trip we take, we carry with us that "what if" scenario.

What if the next trip we book, we find ourselves in a spot we never want to leave? Don’t we all play that out in our minds on every trip we take, allowing ourselves to entertain the thought for even a moment that we might just throw caution to the wind and make this amazing place our new home? How many trips have you had where you asked yourself why you’d ever go back?

It happened to me. And I hope it happens for that kid. If it’s Hilton Head Island, then it’s Hilton Head Island (but he should probably lose the shirt). If it’s a second-story apartment on Main Street USA I have bad news for him. But wherever it is for him, I hope he can live the salt life however he defines it. Apparently you gotta love it.

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