Neighbors

Up around 7:30 the morning after Christmas, I was outside ten minutes later yelling at Farina to shut up her non-stop barking. She ignored me, barking and snarling at nothing I could see. Everything looked normal, no squirrels, birds, armadillos or passing cars to spark her excitement, she mostly paced back and forth barking her fool head off at the high wooden fence that separates us from the neighbor’s house next door. 

One of Farina’s calmer moments

Sometime around 10 o’clock, thereabouts, Farina long over her noisy barking, neighbor Randy came over wondering if I’d seen or heard anything out of the ordinary around 7:30. Said he had gotten up and left in his truck to go fishing about 6:30 leaving his wife and brother-in-law asleep in the house. Once out in his boat, he remembered the Friday trash pick up and called home to tell Jeannie to put the trash and recycle bins out on the road. She told him to forget the trash and skedaddle home, the police were on their way, her car stolen out of the driveway and Jimmy’s truck tossed for valuables. The thief walked through the wide open gate in broad daylight, rummaged around in Jimmy's truck, then found Jeannie's car also unlocked but with the keys on the driver's side floor. He jumped in and made a getaway with Jeannie looking out the window just in time to see Santa Claus speeding out through the gate in her car. And there the source of Farina’s barking is revealed. Unfamiliar smell in the yard next door and she stood at the fence sounding an alert the whole time. In most cases out here, if a stranger walks silently through an unlocked gate and up to the house—even one in a Santa suit—he can expect someone from inside to step out the front door either shooting or waving a gun.

Gate & garage open and nobody home 

I have wondered half a dozen times about Randy’s & Jeannie’s habit of always leaving their gate unlocked and wide open, garage door yawning wide and nobody at home.

……………

You might remember my neighbor down the road. He’s the good guy always willing to help out, always full of backwoods tales, the one with the gap in his front teeth who said he has a “dentist” that works out of the trunk of his Pontiac Le Grand and uses laughing gas as an anesthesia. That’s Manny. We were chatting at the gate the other day, him telling me, “Hell, I'll shoot the *!!%#^!&*^%#. I ain’t got long to live anyways.” He was talking about the rednecks over the way with their giant killer dogs, muscle cars, all night Loretta Lynn parties, and Sunday afternoon Iraqi war re-enactments. In fact, for the past couple of months the dogs are rarely seen, the parties diminished and the big gun shoot-outs even rarer. Seems most of what they do over there these days is run heavy duty equipment like road graders and other Caterpillar giants. Hard to tell what it is they’re doing with all the big yellow machinery, but what used to be invisible behind the trees is now a house revealed by the gouging out of trees and brush. Kind of like they are preparing the command post in a jungle hot zone, 500 feet on four sides of the house denuded of all but flat grassless dirt between them and an encroaching enemy. One thing easy to see without the wall of enclosing trees is the enlarged alligator pond and the rough and tumble 4-wheeler track running around the property.

View of ploughed up ground once blocked by trees

Couple of days after our conversation, the whole area a chilly mess of mud and mist, I was hoping there would be no need to go out. Manny called needing a ride to the store for some smokes. I appreciate his no car, no driver’s license situation and try hard not to turn down his infrequent requests for a ride. So, we drove south two miles to the Kangaroo Store where gas is down to $2.20 and three packs of Manny smokes cost $15. He told me that word from Randy was there's been no news from the police about Jeannie’s stolen car. Doesn’t surprise me. If they haven't found it by now, it's probably long gone, a diminishing blip on the radar headed for the North Pole.

Far down the road Manny’s small trailer sits snug under the trees. 

Yep, that’a toilet just to the left of center.

Swallowed Up

Life in the wilderness among the dirt roads of eastern Florida brings at times the feeling of being swallowed up, of being devoured by the quiet roar of growth swelling outward from every leaf and blade of grass, a green world bristling with the buzz, the chirp and rasp of secret signals, for the most part an unseen world that churns like a breathing engine beneath a green exterior, under a coat of bark, around the whorl of roots—so far off the beaten path every moment is cheek by jowl with an uncountable variety of living things that strive, push, bite, fly, croak, sting and struggle voraciously through abbreviated lifetimes that often end as another’s food.

Walking across the yard in what looks like open space gets me tangled in the elaborate web of one more spider. Neither web nor spider is visible and I swat at sticky, invisible strands that cling like silken tape to arms and face. At the gate I lean over to open the lock and startle two fat brown lizards entwined on the gatepost propagating the species, and then my attention is snatched away by the sharp sting of a fire ant that has found my sockless toes inside a flimsy shoe. Nothing to do but kick the shoe off and scratch around for the fiery devil tormenting tender flesh. I count myself lucky it wasn’t one of the hairy and poisonous caterpillars that hatch from cocoons under the eaves and inch their way down the house walls to drop suddenly on shoulder or head.

From a chair in the backyard the grass looks like it might be visibly growing. I would almost bet it was shorter when I came outside a half hour earlier. Between the two camphor trees is a new patch of orange and black mushrooms, a type that lacks any beauty and comes out of the ground already gnarled. Sitting outdoors at this season and this time of day means that no amount of dedication can hold the focus on only one aspect. Arms, neck, ears and ankles are slathered in Skin So Soft to deter the mosquitos from draining my blood in double-time, but it does nothing for the large, black mud wasps who hover around and under my chair testing the wood for a choice spot to build a nest. Comforting to know that stings from these insects are rare.

One of the large gopher turtles that occasionally lumber out of the woods at the end of my backyard was here yesterday. I tried to entice him with a cut of watermelon but he went right past it, preferring instead the tender shoots of grass all around. A week ago I looked out from the back porch thinking it was another of the unwanted armadillos rooting among the tall oak trees and so unslung the BB gun to run it off. Only after two bright copper BBs pinged off the animal’s back did I realize it wasn't an armadillo at all but one of the gopher turtles, a shape unclear in the distance. No wonder the BBs provoked no reaction. Happy I wasn’t frightening one of the friendlies. Along with the rat snakes, black snakes and three resident marsh hawks, the turtles are welcome neighbors in this hotbox-petri dish that surrounds my four walls in a last frontier.

Blue for Green

Okay, so I’m trading a house at the beach for one in the country. My first thought was, “How does that work?” What will replace the constant background murmur of surf tumbling to spill itself on the beach, the slushy rumble of collapsing waves? In place of the blue and white outside my windows now what will greet my good morning eyes in this new home twenty-one miles south and marginally inland?

Oak Hill, on the Atlantic and southern edge of Volusia County is home to barely 1,800 souls. An early sixteenth-century map shows it as the site of an Indian village called Surruque el Viejo. Before the long-running Seminole Wars starting in 1814, northern timber cutters arrived and named their camp Oak Hill. The name stuck but the timber cutters were eventually driven off by the Seminole. At one time commercial fishermen and citrus growers found the area promising but these days most residents of the town commute either north or south for work.

My current knowledge of the area is slim, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of study to see that Oak Hill’s biggest draw nowadays is fishing. Looking for a grocery store, or God forbid a bookstore, Starbuck’s or McDonald’s is a waste of time in a town no more than a blink along the side of US 1. On my first visit there I spotted the local library, a quaint little building along an oak-shaded lane, but it didn’t require a look inside to tell me that it likely houses fewer books than my at-home library. But there is a hardware store and a weekend flea market, along with a Dollar General and the Country Kitchen Family Restaurant. Among the scatter of bait shops and fish camps is another restaurant named Goodrich’s Seafood & Oyster House. This one has a good reputation and attracts diners from areas outside of Oak Hill. Uncertain if it is still the case, but at one time the restaurant was owned and operated by Larry Csonka, a well-known ex-fullback for the Miami Dolphins football team.

The thing is, I am not exactly moving to the Oak Hill described above. Leave all the excitement behind, head south for another seven miles and at the bottom edge of the county make a left onto a dirt road leading off into nowhere. Somewhere down that road is another left turn and another dirt road leading to Indian River Lagoon. A few hundred feet shy of the lagoon is the place I will soon be calling home sweet home.

Pretty Little Carnivores

Living on the edge of an ocean means living in what can be described as a hyper-active environment, a setting of ever-shifting adjustments to wind, water, light and weather. Adding to the mix the interaction of living elements that color their coastal habitat insures that the faithful observer can never take for granted the scene outside his windows. With two years experience in the beach bum life, one would like to say that awareness of even the small things going on ‘out there’ are by now familiar. But there’s always something new that in some cases is not new at all, only previously overlooked. 

I have by now either wandered, trudged or sloshed my way through almost 2,000 miles of Florida beach, by turn attentive, distracted or curious, and it seems fair to say that I’ve seen a good portion of what goes on there. What exhilarates me is a new discovery just when I think I’ve seen it all. That happened on Thursday and for at least a couple of hours I lost myself in the briny schemes of a sea snail. Hard to count the shells either turned over or picked up in my walks, and many times a new find has brought a whoop of joy. But there are times too when it seems little more than hot, dry sand.

Normally, a pair of Reeboks and a path above the waterline make for the best walk. Something on Thursday morning made me forego the shoes and set a path in the sweep of surf, the water covering at least my feet most of the time. Wave action during the night had created unusual pools and sandbars and a lapse of attention once or twice sent me splashing in water up to my calves, but all of it was refreshing. Before long I came upon something burrowing into the wet sand, its hind parts just disappearing beneath the surface. Stopping for a minute to watch, I was surprised by a tiny white, elongated snout poking out of the sand and waving about like a flexible periscope. I dug the small creature up and saw it was a gooey thing in a pretty cylindrical shell, gray with brown markings. In the space of ten minutes I spotted four others pushing their way through the sand and leaving a curling trough-like trail behind. How could I have never noticed these curious creatures before?

The Oliva sayana, or lettered olive, is a species of small predatory sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk that lives in surf line waters, on shallow or semi-exposed sand flats from North Carolina to Florida and the Gulf states of North America as far as Louisiana and Texas. It is also found in Mexico along the Yucatán coast, and may also be seen in Brazil. It is a carnivore, capturing bivalves (clams and mussels) and small crustaceans with its foot and taking them below the sand’s surface to digest.

The name ‘lettered olive’ comes from its dark surface markings that resemble letters. Because of their beauty, early Native Americans as well as colonists made jewelry from the shells, and possibly for the same reason it is the state shell of South Carolina. The shell is smooth, shiny and cylindrical with only the rear portion having whorls or coils. A narrow opening extends almost the length of the shell, continuing around the bottom. 

           

Humbling to think that this small beauty has been out there under my feet for so long without any notice from me. Hate to think that my powers of observation are becoming slightly jaded.

World in a Grain of Sand

No idea why the question of sand suddenly came to mind while walking the beach on Thursday afternoon. My feet have passed over those same flats, runnels and dunes for close to 2,000 miles in the past twenty-two months and while admiring, complaining, examining close up and photographing the endless stretch of it all, yesterday was the first time it occurred to me to wonder how and why. After taking dozens of pictures and shaking pounds of the stuff out of shoes and clothes, it seemed strange that my thoughts never once turned to the science of something that appears in every window and could even be called a front yard.

The only explanation I had, and an anemic one at best, was to say that sand in its gazillions of grains is something produced by the erosion of rock. But is it the same everywhere, the sand of coastal beaches as well as that making up inland deserts and river beds? Characteristics are not difficult to list about the sand along Florida’s east coast and how it shifts according to season, but those particulars don’t get to the bottom of the question.

Sand accounts for two percent of the earth’s crust and considering how much coastline there is along the earth’s land formations, sandy beaches are relatively rare. More normal are the rocky beaches, or shingle beaches familiar to much of the English coast. Most of the world’s sand is found in rivers, desert dunes and on the ocean floor. Unsurprisingly, the formation of a sandy beach is the result of ocean currents. As waves approach the shallow seabed near the coast, they stir up sand and other sediment. When wave action is small, only the surge or uprush is powerful enough to carry sand far enough to become part of the beach. Moderate-sized waves carry sand both to and from the beach, but generally leave behind more than is carried back to the water. The trouble comes when waves are large and storm driven, for it is then that they erode more sand than they deliver. My home is on the seaward side of a barrier island that is basically an enormous offshore deposit of sand, much like the sandbars seen offshore and in rivers.

Sand dunes are formed through the interaction of sand, wind and plants. Wind along the coastline is nearly constant, forever whipping and swirling the sand about. The plants growing in a dune halt the sand as it blows, and it falls to accumulate at the base of the plants. Gradually this cycle builds dunes. Beach grass and sea oats thrive on the primary dunes, those facing the ocean. Other plants adapted to a high-salt environment thrive on the secondary dunes behind the primary row. Dunes are natural sea walls and shelter the land when wind, water and storms rush in from the ocean, but will shift and erode with the same natural forces that reshape the beaches.

Sand is a mixture of fragments worn down from rocks and shells. Tropical island sand in particular is the end product of eroded coral and sea shells. Although the purest sands consist of quartz or coral alone, most of the sand between your toes is a blend of about two-thirds quartz and other materials including feldspar, rock fragments, clay minerals, small amounts of calcium carbonate and organic trace minerals.

Near impossible to see with the naked eye, but under a microscope a rough-edged grain of sand is evidence that not much time has passed since it was weathered from larger rocks and shells. The grains become rounder as physical abrasion and chemical weathering continue. Desert sand has the roundest grains of all, because wind keeps the particles shifting and hitting against one another constantly. On the dunes of the Sahara wind drives not mere ripples, but vast waves of sand.

Many thousands of years ago much of the sand here in Florida had its origins in the quartz from inland rocks and mountains eroded by wind and rain. Imagining the process, particles of quartz and feldspar are blown or washed into rivers, the feldspar is deposited in estuaries and eventually carried offshore hundreds of miles away from points of origin. Worn, granulated quartz piles up at the mouths of rivers that carry it far downstate to the sea. Ocean currents then work to deposit all the minerals and shell fragments along the coastline.

Changing Faces

A walk on the beach these days offers up faint signals and a small hope that weather patterns, along with ocean currents are on the edge of a shift, that a long hot summer is melting away. Nothing too obvious about it, but still the occasional crackle that nature is on the verge of changing faces. Holiday crowds have thinned and the long sweep of beach is now no longer a tangle of gazebos. Rain and dark clouds have also been part of the change, and not only the parched green but the dry and powdery sand has had a good soaking this week.

Early morning rain on Tuesday gave this unflinching walker a good sopping while cooling the air and smudging the hard lines between sand, ocean and sky. Ocean currents that are a part of August have brought an endless smorgasbord of fish for the pelicans, and in morning and late afternoon hundreds of the big birds gulp down fish, sit on the water for a few moments then flash upward again for another dive into the swarming schools. In the attached photo of two people fishing in the surf, faint specs of brown out on and over the water are pelicans on the hunt.

No doubt the marine biologists who patrol the turtle nests this month are happy to see fewer people at what is a critical time in the hatching season. Only a week ago the beach was a nightly circus of flickering flashlights in the hands of tourists looking for turtles. People visiting the area during these months are warned repeatedly not to interfere with the turtles, the nests or the hatching process, but sadly those warnings do not stop them from running up and down the beach at night with their flashlights.

Two weeks ago the hours between 11:00 and 5:00 were a time of furnace hot heat on the beach, a time when many retreated, waiting for more bearable conditions later in the day. But maybe it is the heat and sun that are in retreat now. The photo here showing the red lifeguard’s chair was taken at noon on Thursday, the first time since May that I have walked on the beach at any time other than early morning or early evening. Temperature in the high eighties, water temperature at 79°, endless vista of blue on blue, and a small sprinkle of people—it doesn’t get much better than that…or at least not until October.

Another Thousand Words

With a full-blown HOA meeting hangover and too many barbs and arrows in my thoughts to enjoy uninterrupted concentration on pleasanter themes, giving in to late afternoon sloth and parking myself on the patio with a tumbler full of rum and Coke helps a lot. Catch it at just the right time and the view from my weathered old Adirondack chair is on a par with chemical tranquilizers. This time palm trees and near golden light cutting through an overcast sky made for another of those pictures that rouse a calm thrill at the way Nature reveals itself.

I read a book once called Patches of Godlight. This must be a picture of that.

And then there were two.

Crooked yeah, but the angled horizon line gives it an interesting tilt.

Huru-Can

Friday was a beautiful day of cloudless blue skies along Florida’s east coast, another of those post card images boasting of a holiday paradise. Unlike other southern regions to the north, Florida has been spared the destruction and loss of life resulting from tornadoes across much of the south this past week. For that we can be thankful, but some of us living here begin to feel a creeping sense of anxiety over the imminent hurricane season running from June through November. It can be especially worrisome if your home is separated from the Atlantic by nothing more than a hundred feet of sand, and less than that during stormy conditions.

The hurricane season of 2004 hit my spot of postcard paradise with devastating fury, leaving me with repairs necessary from the ground up. In the middle of August Hurricane Charlie swung around the bottom of Florida and then doubled back across the state packing a furious wallop, but one which we on the east coast managed to squeak through. A week later I returned to Japan feeling lucky. Only two weeks passed before Hurricane Frances hit the east coast 149 miles south of Daytona and left my home flooded, encased in mold and uninhabitable. Had I been here to jump immediately into action I still couldn’t have saved much. Lucky for me a friend jumped in and rescued the book collection before damp and mold took hold. Those are the times you are are thankful for both friends and insurance. It is also a time when you gain a new respect for the furies of an angry Mother Nature on steroids. It took several months but the condo was rebuilt and refurnished with a new look better than ever.

Having sat out Hurricane Charlie inside these walls wondering if the end would come from evisceration by broken wind-driven glass or from drowning in my bedroom, I developed a finer appreciation for the furies that define a hurricane. Shortly after my experience I came upon a book called The Voyage (1999) by Philip Caputo—one of the greatest coming of age novels ever—which included a particularly fine passage about a hurricane in the Caribbean passing between the tip of Florida and Cuba. Here is Mr Caputo’s vision:

‘The storm was barreling toward them, and the most rational meteorologist, had he seen it as the boys did, from the deck of a forty-six-foot schooner, would have forgotten everything he’d learned from books about heavy weather and felt himself one with the Carib Indians, the first men who had quaked before that wrath and given it a name—huru-can, the demon wind.

Double Eagle tore southwestward under morning stars winking out one by one, her deck slanted thirty degrees…She rolled and banged in the crowded eight-foot seas.

“At this rate, we’ll be in the harbor in less than half an hour,” said Will, standing, as they all were, at a thirty degree angle.

Only minutes later, the storm forced Will to go back on his promises. Though it seemed to the boys’ minds to do so with evil purpose, though it seemed a conscious being, it had no more concern for the promises, the plans, the paltry hopes and dreams of those four adolescents than its ancestor storms had had for the grand schemes of empire and the lust for riches dwelling in the minds and hearts of Spaniards homeward bound from the New World in galleons ballasted with bars of looted silver, their sea chests filled with emeralds and gold plundered from mines where Aztec and Inca labored under the Spanish whip, and all—ships, chests, coins, jewels—driven onto the reefs, smashed, and sunk, the Sevillean and Valencian lords and ladies crying out futile Aves as the waters closed around them and the great wind tore the prayers from their lips and shredded the words before they reached the ear of heaven; no more concern than one of this storm’s big sisters had shown for the souls of Galveston only the summer before, September 8, 1900, when it roared into that city and in a few hours left it looking as if it had undergone a monthlong naval bombardment, the corpses of six thousand of its citizens bloating amid the ruins of their civic pride. Six thousand lives or four, Spanish galleon or Yankee schooner, conquistador or ordinary American boy—it was all the same to huru-can, a true egalitarian in its administration of destruction.’

Not Exactly Bubble Bath

Back in the old neighborhood Ward’s Creek had a bad rep. It was one of those nasty slivers of questionable water and other nebulous ‘ingredients’ that made even an eleven year-old boy’s lip curl with creepy uncertainty. We were ‘careful’ about playing near the creek, but probably not anywhere near as careful as mothers could wish. It really didn’t take a scientist to look into the slimy swirls of Ward’s Creek and see that some of the stuff bobbing around in the water didn’t belong there. Bootsie once told me that he knew a boy who fell in, and two days later caught the polio and was living in an iron lung. That story should have put the brakes on anyone with an eye to playing on the banks of Ward’s Creek, but it never did. The point of this recollection about a dirty stream in my childhood is connected to the nasty yellowish foam that was always in the water of that creek, or lodged against the rocks and clumps of garbage. Of all the possibly dangerous gunk that floated in and on that water, the one that scared us most was that godawful foam that hung on like poisonous meringue. That we steered clear of.

It took awhile but today I finally made an effort to find out just what that dirty old foam is. Ward’s Creek is now 750 miles away but the name and memories of it were called back this morning by the excess of sea foam that decorated the Florida beach outside my door. In any season a long walk along the Atlantic will provide something new to see as long as the walker isn’t too wrapped up in either iPod or cellphone. Birds one day, shells the next and who knows what the next. Today is was heaps and puffs of sea foam piled liked fallen clouds bobbing and jittering on the sand. Why today? Why never before in my months of daily walking? I spent a little time looking it up.

Sea foam or spume is created by the natural agitation of seawater and on most days is seen as nothing more than the usual curly white foam that rides on the back of incoming surf. There are times when the usual becomes multiplied by higher concentrations of dissolved organic matter from a breakdown of algae blooms offshore. Chemical compounds in this breakdown work as a super foaming agent. There are several things like fat and protein involved, but in layman’s terms the seawater is churned by breaking waves in the surf zone, foaming agents (chemicals) in the turbulence trap air and form continuous bubbles that stick to each other because of surface tension created by the chemicals from the algae. The low density of these foam heaps makes them shiver and sometimes blow along the sand.

Comforting to think that on this pristine beach where water and meager amounts of sea foam frequently splash against my feet and legs the foam is harmless. That isn’t always the case. There is a Ward’s Creek version of sea foam that appears on some beaches around the world. In areas where polluted stormwater from rivers or drains empties into the ocean beaches can be polluted with foam containing viruses and other contaminants. There is a type of harmful algae bloom along some coastal areas that creates foam causing skin irritation and breathing difficulty.

Two of the photos on the right give a good picture of how the chemicals from the algae appear under close view. In one it looks as though a handful of jewels have been scattered in the foam, and in the magnified view at the bottom the colors are richer and it looks very much like two black figures stand framed inside bubbles.

Golden Days

Cold this morning, land and seascape all but empty. Wind skates across a flattened beach raising phantoms of sand that shift and swirl in a wind-driven blanket of powdery white. Involved in their secret motives, the birds, unlike last week, this time all face due north. The thought comes to mind that it is the wind that determines their orientation flocked there at the water’s edge. Facing into the wind prevents the ruffling of feathers.

Odd to see so few people on a morning bright with sun. The two men surf fishing in the same spot every morning are today nowhere in sight. Off in the distance two or three small silhouettes are visible, nothing at all to the north. The chill of what is October’s last blow is perhaps the reason for all this sparkling space empty of people. Empty too, of seaweed and the occasional blemish of washed up bottles or stray plastic. This time the sand is flat and clean, clear of all but shells and the restless skitter of Ruddy turnstones digging for breakfast.

For the distance of a mile and a half I walk south, like the gulls, head on into the wind, waiting for the eye of white sun free of clouds to warm my sleeveless arms. I’m grateful that the hard flatness of sand allows a faster pace, a pace that I know will soon enough send a flush of warmth down my arms.

And so it happens. I slip into automatic steps uncounted and beyond awareness, thoughts flying away over the tumbling waves and deep blue water. Almost by accident I look to the right some time later and see the familiar landmark, a weathered brown gazebo set on top of dunes half-shrouded in sea oats. I am warm again and turning back feel the south wind pushing now at my back.

It surprises me that even now the long stretch of hard white is clear of figures for as far as I can see. Friday usually brings a few more people to this paradise of blue and white, but I can only guess that they are still indoors, leaving me to enjoy in solitude this blessing of autumn morning on the outer edge of Florida. I pass a man riding south on a bicycle, not realizing it is my neighbor, Dietrich. Too late now to wave a hello, but then, like me he is focused on other things, wondering perhaps at the absence of pelicans. Just as well, since I am one who lacks the skills of conversation at this early hour on the beach.

Almost unaware of the last hour’s hard walking, I am back at the familiar grouping of palm trees that spell home. I notice how the wind has completely re-drawn in one hour the lines and ripples of sand at my starting point. The peculiar beauty of that earlier sandy design has been blown away, leaving me and my camera to make something of nothing.

The moral, if there is one is this: A morning on the beach in late October is worth a week in August.

Winter Park

A Saturday in town…

It was too late to drive back to the beach on Friday night, so I stayed in town and spent today with my sister. Maitland and Winter Park are interesting places to spend time, so finding things to do was no problem, and it provided the chance to knockabout with my sister, always a pleasure.

There was a farmer’s market in Winter Park, and a visit several years ago guaranteed there would be a lot to see. Even without the farmer’s market, Winter Park is a beautiful little ‘town’ to stroll through, window shop and maybe have a bite of lunch or a cool drink. No mistaking the fact that it is a posh area geared toward people who don’t mind spending a little money, but you don’t have to spend anything to enjoy an hour or two of walking around.

The farmer’s market is a dazzling array of fruit, vegetables, plants, flowers and herbs. There are places to have smoothies, coffee or tea, and a fairly wide selection of things like breads, bagels and other such, plus cheeses, honey, jams and jellies, and even a counter lined with exotic kinds of quiche. There was one vendor featuring homemade relishes and pickled vegetables that I couldn’t get past without sampling a bunch of different relishes. They were all knock out good and I ended up buying three jars—pickled red peppers, pickled corn relish and cabbage salad—all made with fresh ingredients, all pure, all chemical-free.

Later, at Barnes & Noble my sister bought the delightful book by Clyde Edgerton, Walking Across Egypt, and I got a copy of the just released Jonathan Frazen novel, Freedom.

Turning beachward in mid-afternoon, I filled up the gas tank, paying 21¢ a gallon LESS than what the same gas costs at the beach.

Back at the beach, I discovered it crawling-jumping-hopping with weekend visitors. And how I long for Tuesday, the return to a quiet beach empty of people.

Pearl House

Drove over to Eustis for lunch today, to my cousin’s house, about an hour west of the beach. Cindy and her husband Jack (and family) have lived there for something like thirty-two years, in a beautiful house on a lake, one built in 1955. There is a long list of wonderful qualities that makes it an exceptional home, and one of those is the neighboring house, which Jack and Cindy bought in 2006 and use as a guesthouse for visiting family and friends. Originally it was the home of a woman named Pearl Wiglesworth, a dear friend who passed away in 2006. Because of the love they had for her, they have always referred to the house as Pearl House. After the death of Mrs Wiglesworth, Jack bought the house and the adjoining orange grove as an anniversary present for Cindy. (We left there today with three overflowing bags of just picked oranges.)

Pearl House was built in 1970, and still now has a solid structure. Testimony to the care it has been given over the years, the house shows little wear today, forty years later. In renovating the house, the largest expense Jack and Cindy faced was in re-painting the exterior and interior. Next, they put in new floors and replaced the counters in the large and spacious kitchen, choosing matte black counter tops to enhance the varnished maple cabinets. As do many rooms in the house, the kitchen dining nook looks out onto the lake and moss draped oak trees in back. The bathrooms (two upstairs and one downstairs) have the original tile, which they left untouched for its particular beauty.

You must not imagine a community of closely grouped houses around a lake. The property is sprawling and spacious, and more than anything else, crowded with huge old oak trees dripping moss. Both the main house and guesthouse are on a rise that slopes down to the water’s edge. The setting of Pearl House is no doubt a major factor in its great appeal, but it is impossible to underestimate the personal touch and love that Jack and Cindy have stamped upon the house. And to be honest, a few years back I relied upon Cindy’s eye for color and design in planning my own home’s interior here at the beach.

Their friend and neighbor, Pearl, before her retirement was a highly trained nurse, having studied at the Medical College of Georgia, with post graduate work at NYU and Peabody at Vanderbilt University. In talking to Jack about the house this afternoon, he told an interesting story. After the death of Pearl’s husband, and some years before her own death in 2006, Pearl’s sister came to live in Pearl House. At the time she was long retired, but for years her job had been in government, though it wasn't just any old government job. Of all things, she had the distinction of serving for years as private secretary to J Edgar Hoover, first Director of the FBI from 1935 until his death in 1972. Jack told me she remained until her death tight-lipped about her infamous boss. Imagine the stories she could have told.

As for the attached photos, the top one shows a front view of Pearl House; the second is a view looking up at the back of the house from the lake’s southeast shore. The bottom photograph is a view of the lake seen from the elevated screened-in porch at the back.

Beach Blanket Bingo

Since arriving in Florida several days ago, one thing or another has kept me in town, prevented me from driving out to the beach for so much as a look-see. The plan all along has aimed for arrival there on the 1st of May. The days prior to that are a time for handling the business of establishing new residence and ironing out the logistics concerned with setting up house. This morning I had business specific to residency, so made the fifty mile drive over to the east coast.

New Smyrna Beach…

The city is located on what has been called the “Fun Coast,” an environmentally protected stretch of beach between Daytona on the north, and the Kennedy Space Center in the south. The very first settlers arrived there in 1768, but were ultimately forced to leave because of disease and frequent raids by the Seminole Indians. The town was incorporated in 1887, and in 1947 became a city. The population in 2007 was 23,161. The city’s name is no doubt related to the fact that a number of the original settlers were natives of Smyrna, Turkey. These days, ‘Florida’s Secret Pearl’ attracts over 1,000,000 visits each year.

Today was a stunning day in New Smyrna; still too cold for ocean swimming, but comfortable on the beach, and in all four directions a treat to the eyes. I hadn’t been there since last August, and the first few breaths of cool ocean-scented air today were like a magical elixir of life. The only thing missing during my short time there this morning was a glimpse of the magnificent brown pelicans native to the area. The sight of them soaring overhead in flocks of six to ten has always lifted my heart, and I’ve passed several summer vacations enchanted day after day by their in-flight beauty

I found everything in order in the condominium, and expect it will be even shinier after the cleaners have worked their charms on Friday. By Saturday afternoon I hope to have sand between my toes, pelicans overhead and the sun’s amiable light in my pocket.

Riding the Wind

Thoughts on a cold winter day…

Each year during the summer months a need arises to get out of Japan for a while, and probably more than anything else, a desire to distance myself from the everyday colors and textures of life here. Definitely an expatriate sense of longing, but I hesitate to call it a longing for home. The years in Japan have been enough to qualify Tokyo for that label more convincingly than any other place. But despite my years here, and the long list of things I love about it, the things I don’t love about it compel me to leave for a period of weeks each summer.

I am fortunate enough to have a place on Florida’s east coast not far from Daytona Beach. The description ‘on the beach’ in this case is about twenty-five yards short of literal. Walk out the door to find yourself on sand in half a minute, and up to the knees in surf only moments later. And so for obvious reasons I enjoy long hours on the beach, either floating on waves, walking for long stretches, or parked under a big umbrella with a book. Though I do swim fairly well and am not at all afraid of the water, even when the waves are big, romping all day in the surf is not what excites me. Neither do I enjoy stretching out in the blazing sun working on the perfect tan. With sun so hot and abundant, you learn quickly when the best hours are on the beach. Early morning before 8:00 is good, but the later hours from 5:00 to 7:00 are also an especially fine time.

Despite the accumulated weeks at the beach each year, I don’t know very much about boats. I don’t fish, have only been out on boats three or four times, and surely can’t handle a boat by myself. Catamarans sailing up and down the coast are not an unusual sight in Florida, and hardly a day passes when you don't see several sail past. Last August I had an eye-opening experience at the beach, one that left me almost intoxicated for the next several days.

Walking along the beach, late afternoon, doing nothing special, but perfectly content in my solitary stroll, almost unaware of others around me, I came across some people dragging a catamaran down to the surf line. In my ignorance it never occurred to me that the number of people was too small to sail the catamaran safely, and it surprised me when one of them asked me if I would like to go out for a sail, that they needed one more person. I said, “Sure, but you will have to teach me what to do.” Apparently that was no problem, so I joined them in hauling the catamaran out into the water. The ‘captain’ told me right off that balance is very important on a catamaran, and that everyone must sit along the edge, on either side of the boat. It took a little clumsy wrestling, but we got the catamaran out a ways and all piled on, half on one side, half on the other. In just a few moments wind caught the sail and the catamaran went flying over the water like a bird on high-octane.

I suddenly found myself in a magical world I had never imagined. Apart from the captain’s orders to shift position or look out for the swinging spar, the only sounds were the wind beating against the sail, and the catamaran bouncing and skimming over the blue ocean. The water sprayed or exploded in my face as I hung leaning backward over the side, lost in the thrall of wind and water borne excitement. We were on the water for about twenty minutes, all of it racing in perfect harmony with wind and ocean. My thought on returning to land was that this was an experience too short by far.

Thanks offered and heading back home, still feeling the lift of wind and the splash of water on my face, I began thinking about taking up the sport of catamaran sailing. Reality took the wind out of that thought when I discovered that owning and sailing a catamaran is not only a very expensive hobby, but one that requires a long period of learning how to handle a sailboat. But oh, what a thrill!