Florida is hot as blazes!

It's 97 degrees today, as it was yesterday. A time to stay in the air conditioning or hop in the cold springs. Two years ago this time, we were in Weeki Wachee Springs, home of the famous tourist-loving mermaids. To cool off, I'm posting their photos!

AT LEAST WE GET AFTERNOON SHOWERS DURING A HEAT WAVE.....

By Julie Hauserman

You are in an aluminum canoe.

You are thinking: Houston, we have a problem.

Under an oak by the side of the river. Lightning cracks. Thunder booms. CLAP-CLAP BOOM! You keep bailing. The boat keeps filling. And you think: My family is going to kill me if I die in a lightning storm in the middle of nowhere.

You actually wish the boat had a hole in it to drain the water and then, through your panic, you realize the fallacy of that idea.

CLAP-BOOM! The rain falls so hard it hurts when it hits, maybe some hail. Just 15 minutes ago, you wanted to swim but there are alligators here. God. Alligators, and lightning and thunder CLAP-BAM!

Lightning hits the tree that’s NEXT to the tree under which you are huddled. You feel the sizzle in the air, smell the ozone, and wonder why you didn’t spring for a new plastic canoe, or a wooden one.

You shout to your friend in the front of the tiny boat, considering making a run for it. But where would you – CLAP-BOOM! – run to?

You have a good job and you are a good parent. But that doesn’t matter here.

Bail. That’s the only thing to do. Bail. Bail, Wipe rain out of your eyes. Watch the rain fall so hard it makes the river roil. The canoe rocks as you hurl water over the side.

It’s bail or sink.

You could try to climb into the swamp, but it’s just tree trunks, slippery roots and snakes. Plus, it’s alligator nesting season and they don’t care if it’s raining.

Bail. Keep bailing. The water laps at your ankles. Your sun hat has blown into the dark swamp. Maybe a gator is looking at it, wondering if a tasty human might be coming to fetch it.

And then - just like that - the lightning eases off a bit. You figure, well, let’s make a run for it now. Paddle, bail. Paddle bail. Paddle bail. And you are as cold as you were hot just a few minutes ago, teeth chattering, heart pounding. A water moccasin slithers past, and you are thankful for the boat, even though it has a good five inches of water in the bottom, sloshing over your camera and the remains of your picnic lunch.

The rain gets lighter –miraculously- and you paddle through the edge of the storm’s curtain, like leaving a misting tent at the county fair. You’re in sunshine looking back at the storm. The river is flat. Dragonflies hover. A white heron works the shallows. A mullet jumps.

Now, you can bail the canoe for good.

 

 

Here's a new poem:

Tree of Life

In the picture I am thin.
Corrine is next to me and she
is sly smiling. We wear
flowered dresses
in the back yard where
crepe myrtles drip hot pink
summer froth petals at our feet.
Corrine doesn’t know
she’ll be dead
in seven months.
Pulling from the median,
she won’t see the truck.
Of all things, a flowered branch
will block her view.

II.

In the picture I am smiling wild.
Corrine and I are going out dancing.
I don’t know I’ll be pregnant
in five months,
married
in six months,
mother in nine,
divorced in two years.
I don’t know I will grow smaller
as my daughter grows larger.
She will be the green bud reaching;
I will grow gray bark and tangled roots.

III.

In the picture the woods are small.
The pines don’t have heavy arms yet.
Celadon grass spikes the meadow,
sunset still sparks it gold.
This is an old picture.
Today, this is deep forest,
shoulder to shoulder shaggy arboreal soldiers
blocking out the sun.
In the picture there are fewer branches,
more sky.

 

HOW TO LOVE FLORIDA

By Julie Hauserman

Florida is such a mystical, made-up, watery mirage place. If you paint a sunset using the real colors, it looks fake, like motel art.

If you live here, you know that those colors do exist. That sometimes, canoeing on the mirrored surface of a cold, black spring, it looks like you’re paddling through sky. Sometimes, fog fills up the dune hollows like wildfire smoke. Blue heron statues poke out of green marsh. White ibis swirl, blizzard-like, off mangrove branches.

Breathe in that Florida smell. Clean. Salty. Blue. Listen to the birds – so many you can’t know all their names. Hear the water suck air when the alligator goes under.

Go barefoot, but watch your step.

There is so much to know here, and so much to lose. I have been writing about natural Florida for 19 years, and I feel like a storm chaser, bulldozers at my heels.

What we have become: House-driveway-mailbox-house-driveway-mailbox-house-golf course-strip mall-high rise-big mall-theme park-house-driveway-mailbox-house.

Foxwood is Glenwood is Heron Place. The wild things get pushed to woods and swamps without names. Once, state wildlife biologists radio-tracked a wild panther as it dozed beneath a billboard near a trailer park.

We have saved some great places, thank God. We all own wonderful beach and riverfront and springs and wild jungle woods. Big chunks of it and small slices, all public. We own the bottoms of rivers and bays. The sand under the curling beach waves is still public. Some species that we hurt are coming back; bald eagles and alligators – to name two.

But we have let so many places slip away. “Look at that,’’ we say listlessly, looking out the car window. “Another strip mall.’’

Near my house, an Eckerd’s drug store sits, improbably, on what used to be an otter pond. I used to love a hilly cow pasture near where I live. The hillside soared toward the sky, and always reminded me of that Andrew Wyeth painting, Christina’s World. One day, I watched men drive huge trucks across that hill and load up the cows. They were making way for another crop of houses. Emerald Lakes, I think they called it. Odd name: in Florida, a green lake isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Where I live, the roads keep getting wider and the fat oaks keep coming down.

I need to tell you: So much of what happens to the wild, loamy jungle that is Florida’s heart happens inside buildings. It happens in county commission chambers and corporate boardrooms and Cabinet meetings and - God help us all - in the Legislature.

While you are going to work and picking up your kids, while somewhere nearby a heron works the shallows and an osprey plummets for a fish, deals are being struck. Impacts are justified. And when people talk about ‘the environment,’ what they always end up talking about is money.

I can’t tell you how many people in suits I’ve heard assuring us that they had found a “win-win situation.’’ As if wild Florida could possibly win when another three high rises were getting piled on top of her sagging, sandy spine.

I’ve watched governments put a price on trees. We let developers fill one swamp if they promise to build another, somewhere else. Sometimes, we let the bulldozers have their way and just take money in exchange. We let boats go fast where manatees float because the boats bring money and the manatees don’t.

We don’t like to say no.

And, like ants swarming over the remains of a picnic in the park, Florida’s newcomers aren’t particular about the landscape. The sun shines and the palms wave, and that’s enough. That scares me.

The Everglades could be completely overrun with cattails – a clear sign of water pollution there – and somebody who moved here from New Jersey would think the big marsh looks great. Thousands of people live in Florida condominums around “lakes’’ that are really man-made stormwater ponds, and they never know the difference. At Florida beaches, the waves still look pretty hitting the shore, even if the ecosystem is so sick that the fish are filled with poison.

I challenge you: Learn to see through the mirage. Tell Florida’s stories. Paint her sunsets. Photograph what’s here now, and what’s lost.

Love this place fiercely and loudly. Keep telling. Keep reminding.