When asked to describe my research stint in Port Aransas, I am often only able to come up with a single descriptor: "weird." The following is my attempt to articulate:
This little town known colloquially as "Port A" offers the options of dining, drinking, shopping, getting a tattoo, or some permutation thereof. The permanent residents number less than the student body at Carleton, but the population at least doubles every weekend. Great blue herons wander the streets and are given less attention that squirrels would merit, if there were squirrels here, which there aren't. The number of Hummers I see daily is roughly equivalent to the number of great blue herons. Simply being outside one is threatened by red ants, killer mosquitoes, sand burrs, and unreasonable temperature and humidity readings. I spend my days counting icky yet somehow awesome ocean bugs, wincing when disembodied stomatopod eyes float through my field of view. I have been given practically no guidance on my research, and yet somehow I conquer the lab for eight hours daily, usually finding something that I hope is productive to do with myself. No one suspects that last spring I declared a major in religion with a minor in neuroscience. I have read seventeen books since I've been here, and had a nasty case of what is assumed to have been Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I've taken up the uncharacteristic habit of introversion. Most days I wake up before six to jog in the watery light of dawn and watch the brown pelicans perform elaborate line dances. I should be bored, and I might even have just cause to be miserable, but I'm neither. I'm perpetually amused by what's happening to me, and laugh at myself from a distance that, strangely, isn't unattached.
Yes, I could say all these things when asked what my experience in Port Aransas has been like, but, in most cases, "weird" seems to be sufficient.
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