This article is from the winter 2025 edition of Mobile Baykeeper’s print quarterly, CURRENTS. The magazine is mailed to active members who have given more than $50 in the past year. To get on the magazine’s mailing list, donate here.
By Hanlon Walsh
It’s amazing what a few pilings, some plywood, and a lot of persistence can create. This familiar waterfront trifecta perfectly sums up The Landing at our family’s home on Little Lagoon. Board by board and storm after storm, the low-frills hub has anchored our family gatherings and formed a lifetime of memories through every post-hurricane rebuild.
Depending on where you grew up along the Gulf Coast, you might have another name for these timeless waterfront structures. At the Gulf, perhaps you call it a wharf. On the Bay, most folks say pier. On smaller waterways like rivers, creeks, or canals, you might call it a dock. And in the Delta, it’s the Camp.
But at the Lagoon — at least our version of the Lagoon — it’s the Landing. There’s no sweeping walkway that leads to a two-story pier with slides, boat slips, TVs, or built-in grills; just a small wooden platform hovering over ankle-deep water at the end of our board-walk.
It’s not fancy, but it does the job. Then again, nothing about the Lagoon has ever been fancy — and that’s exactly how we like it. Damaged and rebuilt in the wake of Frederick, Camille, Ivan, Katrina, Sally, and countless other storms, the Landing mirrors many of the traits I admire most in our family: tough as nails, resourceful, loyal, persistent, and always welcoming. It’s a true waterfront embodiment of Southern hospitality, with a come-one, come-all policy for Lagoon visitors from every walk of life.
If the Lagoon were a college campus, the Landing would be its quad. Except here, the Landing isn’t just a place to tailgate — it’s the main event. It is the heart of Lagoon life, where our family’s many subcultures “land” at different times of day, all grounded by the same stretch of wood and water that has united generations of our Lagoon family for nearly 80 years.
Introducing Lagoon Subcultures
Everyone has their own Lagoon identity, and with it, a different relationship with the Landing.
First, there are the Piddlers: those who prefer to stay as far away from the Landing as possible, wandering restlessly in search of a project that may be semi-useful at best (Hint: not me). They’ll make the occasional Landing visit to show face until the sun or stillness quickly drives them away.
While the Landing is no place for them, under the house is a piddler’s paradise. Here, chaos meets clutter among random furniture, rusted beach chairs, floaties, fishing gear, power tools, loose nails, and every odd wooden board imaginable. It’s a rustic museum of miscellaneous treasures that keeps a Piddler’s mind at ease.
Then come the Fishermen (also not me) — those who treat the Landing as both a runway and a red carpet for their twice-daily expeditions. In the morning, they strut the runway to a chorus of warm goodbyes and good-lucks with tackle in tow. At dusk, they return to either red carpet photo fanfare or condolence, depending on the size of their haul. There’s always an element of suspense when Ricky’s brown boat comes into view from the Landing. Will they glide in grinning with red fish and speckled trout? Or stumble home drunk and disappointed after tossing back catfish and croaker?
For the Fishermen, the Landing also doubles as a sacred altar and feeding ground for our adopted Great Blue Heron, Mr. Richard, aptly named by my late grandfather, Rock (“Ricky”) O’Neill. After each trip, he’d clean his catch and leave the scraps for Mr. Richard, who swiftly swooped down for his share. It has since become a family ritual and unique circle of life exchange between man and bird. These days, we swear Mr. Richard is Ricky reincarnated, constantly circling above us. He’s either grumbling at our incompetence or helping us reel in the next big catch, depending on his afterlife mood.
Next are the Avid Indoorsmen (also not me) — well, really just one. My dad, Edgar, proudly coined this title years ago and the nickname has stuck ever since. He rules over the Lagoon’s indoor kingdom, keeping close watch over the AC, fridge, recliners, remote, and Saturday sports lineup. Like the Piddlers, he’ll make the occasional box-checking Landing appearance, but his heart inevitably calls him back to the rugged indoors.
And finally, there are the Landing Loyalists — a tight-knit matriarch-led squad once captained by my late Aunt Lillis. She was perfectly content spending hours on end basking in the sun with zero interest in a piddling project, fishing quest, or sports showdown. We even have a sign in the kitchen that reads “Lagoon Like Lillis,” a playful motto reminding us to embrace her simple art of Lagoon chill. Today, my mom Shannon and Aunt Erin carry on this legacy, holding court on the Landing while rotating between family hostess duties and swim breaks with my niece Mary Haynes, whom she affectionately calls “Shugie and Boogie.”
My Landing Identity
Somewhere between the Piddlers, Fishermen, Indoorsmen, and Loyalists, I’ve found my own Lagoon rhythm — an intermittent Landing Loyalist, you might say. I’m a part-time lounger who needs bursts of motion in between. A morning run or tennis match with my brother Richard, followed by a laid-back Landing lunch and afternoon beer hang, and then a paddle or swim to cool off usually does the trick. That’s my version of a perfect Lagoon day.
As a child, the Landing was a launchpad for swimming lessons, benefitting from the Lagoon’s shallow waters that create a saltwater playground for toddlers and kids alike. It was also where we got the first of many splinters while racing down the boardwalk to jump in the water. Fortunately, my late grandmother “Sa” always had tweezers at the ready for her 17 grandchildren, knowing each of us would soon be destined to meet our first Lagoon splinter.
The Landing also served as a charcuterie board of sorts for my sand-to-table creations delicately crafted on the Lagoon’s small strip of beach. Menu highlights included wet-sand “drip castle sliders” and dry-sand “lemon meringue pies,” concoctions only a child’s imagination could create with a sandy blank canvas. I also fondly recall inching through the shallow water beneath the Landing to launch surprise attacks on the toes and feet of said Landing Loyalists, who made themselves vulnerable in the gaps between each plywood board.
While I leaned on the Landing’s forgiving waters and sandy shoreline as a kid, my best memories as an adult rest above its wooden boards. As a self-prescribed “social introvert,” the Landing equally fills both my extroverted and introverted cups. On the rowdiest, family-filled Lagoon afternoons, it becomes a swim-up bar and cousin hangout hub, with coolers, chairs, chips, and dips occupying nearly every inch of wood imaginable.
On quiet mornings, it’s transformed into a sunrise yoga studio, an outdoor library, a make- shift gym, and even a remote waterfront office during the pandemic. And on still, breezy evenings, it’s a Lott family speakeasy reserved for the sunset seekers and night owls after a fresh shower washes the salt and sand from our sunburnt bodies.
Landing Reflections
The Landing has watched me grow up, drift away, and return again — each time a little older (and hopefully wiser), yet always drawn back to the same spot that shaped my first Lagoon memories. It’s far more than the sum of its creaky wooden parts; it’s a touchstone for every version of myself that’s come home to the water.
For the Landing that taught me to swim, splintered my feet, stored my sandcastle creations, offered solace and solitude, gathered family near and far, and has given me a place to laugh and listen for 35 years — it will always be this Landing I choose to remember, no matter what time and tides may bring.
Boards will splinter. Pilings will decay. Shorelines will shift. And hurricanes will inevitably strike, tearing apart the places we hold tightly to our hearts.
Storms may wash away our landings, wharves, piers, docks, and camps, but the veins of our coastal blood run thicker than the wood beneath our feet or the saltwater that surrounds us. It lives in the memories anchored to these sacred places, and in the people who return to them, time and again, through each chapter of life.
For long after the storms have passed, our soul and spirit will endure beyond the pilings and plywood that call us home.
