When we anchored off the Mississippi barrier islands, I thought about the hermit artist Walter Anderson. He had lived as part of the environment on Horn Island, devoured by sand gnats, yellow flies and bugs. He withstood the freezing north winds and the broiling heat, and became part of the seasons of the sea. No doubt the yellow flies biting me were descendents of the ones that had tormented him.

After the boat docked in Pascagoula, I caught a ride to Ocean Springs and turned off onto a road paved with broken seashells to the Anderson complex. Time seemed to freeze; instantly the subdivisions and carscapes of an exploding sunbelt town were left behind, and the Old South returned. It was as wooded as my home in Panacea. Jutting out over the marsh from a shoreline covered by massive slash pines and live oaks draped with moss was his family's living dock. It was from this dock, with its old silver planking, that Walter Anderson embarked in his small skiff, crossing the Mississippi Sound to Horn Island. My affinity for the man and the place grew.

After days at sea I suppose I looked a little wild, and it took some persistence before I convinced Sissy, Anderson's widow, and her daughter Mary, to let me see his work. Finally Mary led me to his little cottage beneath the moss-draped oaks of the coastal forest, not far from the dock. In the last years of his life, he allowed no one into his cottage. After he died his family opened the doors and gazed with wonder and surprise at the vast multitude of water colors, pen-and-ink drawings, block prints, wood carvings and sculptures he had left. There were over thirty thousand pieces. The amount of work produced by one man was mind-boggling.