It was blackberry season, so with pots in hand, my brother Trevor and I made our way to the thick berry bushes where the wetlands met the dunes. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Gulf Shores, Alabama, was mostly unsettled with vast stretches of open beaches and vegetation that reached down to the Gulf of Mexico. We were two small boys picking berries along the dirt road near our family’s cottage in the dunes when suddenly, we found ourselves running for our lives.