Have you ever tried to plan the perfect day? The perfect trip? The perfect anything?
Tell me, how perfect did it end up?
I concocted the title of this post nearly 2 months ago. I knew what was coming at the end of my summer - the perfect vacation, the perfect happy ending - and I was already excited to write about it, to share what greatness I most certainly knew I would glean from it.
My expectations were high; I wanted to do it all. We were staying on Tybee Island, a lowcountry beach outside of Savannah, GA with tall grasses and quiet shores, and like any vacation I plan, I was looking to get something out of it. I wanted to leave refreshed, renewed, changed. I wanted that island to imprint on my soul, and I was going to put in whatever work was necessary to make that happen.
So I made lists. I researched. I mapped. I knew we didn’t have enough time to do everything, but I felt confident in my plans. We would do as much as we could. We would make the most of that last week of August, of the last of summer.
And that’s the first way in which I approached it all wrong.
The tide was high when we arrived - so high that the steps from our boardwalk led directly into the water, leaving the sandy beach shallow, quaint, and quiet. In just a few minutes, we spotted our first dolphins, along with a massive number of birds, a solitary heron, and a few abandoned crab legs. There was delight to be found in all of it, a loosening of the reins I held so taught in my belly. I took pictures and videos. I laughed.
As we walked the beach, we encountered a party of fellow dolphin-watchers drinking bottles of beer as they floated in the shallow water. They cheered and clapped as the dolphins performed flips above the water, encouraging more. This is it, I said to myself. This is presence. This is magic. There was no point in trying to take a photo. It was what it was. And it was good.
The following morning, we set out to hike an island trail near Fort Pulaski, where I was informed by the ranger at the front gate that the fort would be closing at noon that day in order to start hurricane preparation.
It wasn’t a surprise - we’d been keeping an eye on the radar with our fingers crossed - but hearing her say it made it all the more real. Yes, a hurricane was coming. In less than two days. Our time here was limited and there was a good chance that - instead of extending our stay as originally intended - we’d likely have to head out even earlier than planned.
And if I wasn’t in my head enough already, now I really was worried.
Our hike was pleasurable nonetheless. We took photos on an old Polaroid camera that belonged to my grandparents and still - quite miraculously - took some really great shots. We marveled at tiny crabs that crossed our path in their own lateral manner. We saw giant spiders and tall grasses and interesting trees. It was so apparent how thrusting oneself into the present moment could heal the anxiety around creating a perfect one. Perfection was apt to appear on its own, if if only I could remember to allow it.
We decided to go about the rest of our day, quietly pondering what might come next. It hadn’t taken long for time to feel like it was slipping through our fingers - especially if this hurricane hit and cut our time in half. The whole scenario was increasing my anxiety around the intention of this trip. I had to make the most of it. Had to.
The fact that I couldn’t let go of this? Error of the Game.
That evening, we were wandering around Savannah’s historic district when we stumbled on a sign that seemed to direct us towards a tavern below The Olde Pink House restaurant. I looked at Webb, and he nodded his approval, so we began to make our way down the stairs, hearing piano music from inside. The stained glass door was unmarked. “Are we doing this?” I asked, feeling as if we were about to intrude on a private party. “I’m with you,” Webb said, and I pushed open the door.
Inside was the coziest, most lively little tavern I had ever seen. There were high-backed chairs and candlelit tables, stone walls and a pirate ship hanging above the bar. We were greeted with warm hellos - “Come on in and please have a seat!” - the sort of scenario that would likely not be able to occur during peak season. This moment was meant to be ours. Everyone inside The Planter’s Tavern seemed to be a part of something - not because they had come together, but because they had come here. We ordered some cocktails and a few appetizers, and decided to post up for an hour or two.
Upon hearing we were from Tennessee, the pianist played “The Tennessee Waltz”, and a Canadian man at the bar turned around to tell us about this great time he’d had on a trip to Chattanooga, where he stayed in a cabin and drank Tennessee whiskey while staring up at the stars. You could tell how moved he was by this memory, in much the same way that I am now moved by the memory of this very evening. About 20 minutes later, he even turned around again to share a photo of the bottle. It wasn’t a long or especially monumental interaction, but it was pure. All of us connected, once again, for no reason except for the fact that we had stumbled here on a whim on the Monday before a hurricane.
We stayed up late that night, walking the beach in the dark, gazing upon a lit fishing boat in the sea. We searched for shells by the light of the moon, and returned to our condo for a close match of Scrabble.









Day Two brought along the realization that we would, indeed, need to leave that night. Despite the locals at the Tybean Coffee Bar expressing their doubts about the severity of the storm, we watched as other local shop owners began stacking sand bags up against their already-closed doors. We took to the internet and booked an Airbnb in Atlanta, then returned to the beach for another walk before loading up the car and venturing back into Savannah for some daytime exploration, dinner, and a ghost tour. After the ghosts, we would head to Atlanta and be there by about 12:30 AM.
We arrived in town to find that many of the businesses we were interested in visiting were already closed for the oncoming storm. We wandered through a trickle of rain, checking out a few of the historic squares, taking more Polaroid photos, and avoiding the sincere temptation to bring home a souvenir stash of Spanish Moss - anything I could do to take a little bit of this city home.
I found myself floundering between varying levels of disappointment and joy, losing the perfection of presence I had learned but quickly forgot.
There was so much we hadn’t seen, hadn’t eaten, hadn’t captured in a perfect photo. And now, our time almost over. Our tour of the haunted home was a fitting final touch, but as we headed back to the car, Webb could feel me pull back. I was stalling, still trying to soak it in before we uttered a hurried goodbye to the mysterious beauty of this place.
Wednesday morning, halfway home was exactly where I wasn’t ready to be. (I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry about it.) We brewed some coffee and relaxed on the couch of the small converted shed we’d rented, listening to the light rain on the roof and watching news coverage of Hurricane Idalia as it ravaged the Florida coast, making its way towards Georgia. It was obvious that we had made the right choice; although Tybee never saw the worst of the storm, driving through the torrential rain and tornado-warning winds would’ve made our journey difficult.
This was one of Webb’s favorite moments, he later told me, just being there, with me. I couldn’t say I felt the same. I was too clouded by all of the “what if”s running through my mind.
We found a few things to do in town, and by that afternoon, we’d made it home in one piece. Webb was still suffering from his “allergies,” and I was coming down with them, too, and so the rest of our “vacation” was spent at home, continuing to partake in the beach reads we’d begun at the start of the week. I made blueberry buckle coffee cake, we opened the windows of our house to the relatively cool 75 degree mornings, and we made the most of it, slowly making peace with the way things were.
It was far from the perfect I’d imagined, but offered the time and space to reflect.
Which brings me back to the title of this post - the one I chose with one intention, that grew to take on another: What does it mean to make the most of it?
Is it the planning, the pushing, the purpose-making?
Or is it the dodging, the easing, and the healing?
In hindsight, I see exactly how we made the most of the end of it. How, when things didn’t seem to be going our way, we let the path unfurl before us - catching the cemetery in the last 40 minutes before they closed, wandering the streets of the historic district when there were no shops to duck into, booking a ghost tour for the last possible moment, finding a museum in a city we hadn’t planned to visit, hoping for the best when an unexpected issue arose in my old reliable Hyundai.
We survived. We learned. We lived. And looking back, I realize now that it was all quite perfect in its own way. While we may be fast approaching the end of this summer, it is not the end of all summers. There is still so much to see - there remains the opportunity to return and to experience other new places that will offer their own kind of magic, their own unexpected perfections.
Of course, if everything had gone as planned, this post wouldn’t be what it was meant to be. Sure, I could’ve simply told you how beautiful the trees were, how spooky the ghost stories, how elegant the architecture, how peaceful the ocean….but what would you have gained from it? What would I?