by John Railey

ISLAND ANYWHERE — Greetings from the beach, friends. We are the Knights of the Iguana.

Come to our state of mind by following sunbeams across the sand or the wondrous path a full moon casts across a calm sea. Stroll into our straw shack.

There are no rules, dues, paperwork or strict requirements here. All we ask is that you go barefoot whenever you can and carry the beach lifestyle in your heart 365 days a year, even if you aren’t among those God-kissed enough to live on the coast. Especially if you are in that class. We feel that this time of year, mid-November, with the election finally over, is a great time for a getaway.

So kick off your shoes, sink your toes into some imaginary sand and hear us out. We won’t get our feelings hurt if you reject us, or even if you stop reading here. We’re beach folk, the ultimate locals.

We come from a land of not worrying about anything, one where it’s 5 p.m. all day long, a place a lot less crowded and commercial than Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville. We believe that if you are enough of a crazy dreamer, you can live the bleakest Monday night in the Piedmont winter as if you’re at Key West, Nags Head, Wrightsville Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Bimini, St. John or whatever be your favorite beach. The important thing is that you keep the memories of that last trip playing in your head, along with dreams of your next trip.

We take our inspiration from older clans along this line, including The Order of Neptunus Rex, which some of our fathers who served in the Pacific during World War II were fortunate enough to join.

We take our name from some iguanas we met recently on St. Thomas. These fat happy lizards spent their days and nights sunning on rocks on a high hill above the Caribbean, staring out at that blue-green water.

Out here, we call each other “brother,” “sister” or “buddy.” We have no politics. If we did, we’d make Peter Pan president.

Our group’s free-loving legacy runs as deep as the sea. We exist in paradise, as happy as the dolphins frolicking around our surfboards and kayaks. The sharks don’t bite here, the sun doesn’t cause skin cancer, there is no overdevelopment and our beach is always seashell-studded and very walk-able at low tide. We are the sand of your glory days, the ones where your parents were gods who would live forever and romance reigned.

Our music comes from a jukebox that features the tunes of your lives, including Andy Williams’ “Moon River,” Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind,” Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic,” and Jimmy Buffett’s “A Pirate Looks at Forty.” Our old TVs play reruns of surf movies, “McHale’s Navy” and “Hawaii Five-0,” the original series. Our books are worn-out hard-covers and paperbacks, ranging from Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not” to Pat Conroy’s “The Prince of Tides.”

And we tell our own stories, in our bars and around our beach bonfires at night, often ones that make us laugh.

No worries, mon.

So pour your favorite beverage in a cup (a “traveler” as we say) and dance across our sand.

Oh, one last note. With Blackbeard’s sword, we anoint Jimmy Buffet as a leader of The Knights of the Iguana. Congratulations, Sir James. We await word from you.

The beach is about nothing if not dreams.

JOHN RAILEY is a Courtland native and the editorial page editor of the Winston-Salem Journal, which first published this column. His email address is jrailey@wsjournal.com.