🐉 Nessie Visits Dauphin Island

 By Cecelia “CeCe” Redmond

Storyteller’s Prelude:
Every beach walk carries its surprises — sometimes it’s just a perfect shell, sometimes it’s something that stirs imagination and laughter in equal measure. This is the day Scotland’s most famous legend decided Alabama’s coastline was worth a visit.

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A stroll along the beach, kicking at sand and pocketing shells, came to a sudden stop — shock and disbelief froze me mid-step.

There she was.
Bobbing and dipping along the shoreline like she’d wandered far from home. Poor thing — that Atlantic crossing must have been rough. She looked torn and travel-worn, but the warmth and sun of Dauphin Island, Alabama, were already reviving her sea-weary soul.

“Nessie!” I called out, but her head dipped quickly beneath the waves, hiding her identity. She didn’t want the world to know she’d left the Scottish lochs to frolic in the sun-drenched waters of the Gulf.

Maybe she’d followed the Gulf Stream, riding it past shrimp boats and barrier islands, heading west toward the Pacific Coast highways.

I searched for her last year when I stood on the shores of the lochs of Scotland — but since she didn’t come when I called, I can only assume she’s still on holiday, basking somewhere along my own Alabama shores.

Afterword:
Whether she was driftwood or a dream, I’ll never say for sure. But that’s the beauty of both myth and memory — they meet where the tide turns, just long enough to remind us that imagination still walks beside us on every shore.

And as Granny always said: “Never forget how to play.”