02-25-2012 0525 Sea Breeze Cabins, Sanibel Island(it’s not Kansas, Christine!), Fla.
OK, Atul, lets run the damn check list. Mild breeze off the Gulf of Mexico. Check. Whispering palms.Check. Ceiling fan with those built in light bulb sockets gently rotating over the king sized bed. Check. Cozy little cabin with the occasional palmetto bug on the front porch next to the plastic dishpan you wash the sand off your feet after crossing the shell driveway from the beach. Check. Hmm…well; must be Paradise after all, I guess we can get on with the operation.
Only my companion on this trip isn’t Dr Gawande or Dr Vergese, it’s Ms. Sala!! And guess what: she loves Florida and Sanibel in particular. I guess these checklists actually work after all!!
I mean, what’s not to love in this season? Oh sure, a few extra sentient beings who must be kept away from the voting booth at any cost, but it’s too early for the mosquitos, there were actually 14 inches of rain somewhere in the not too distant past, and Steve, our airboat driver, was avuncular and full of information (some of it less than totally well researched) about everything from apple snails to the origins of the Seminole.
“Yes I have been in an airboat” said Sala when I proposed this monstrously un-PC activity. “ In New Zealand!”. Well, no honey, that was a JETboat…but the two have a lot in common. In both cases you get into something that has the innocent look of a child’s plaything scaled up. Yesterday, at Osceola Panthers small airboat ride, gift shop and snack bar (proudly located 15 miles west of Krome Avenue on the Tamiami Trail US 41 and open daily 9 AM to 5 pm) we wandered around said gift shop as we waited for ‘the driver to gas up the boat’ (that’s the non- PC part; no further environmental horrors). Way too many little tanned and dried alligator heads (well, if we sold veal heads in stores there would be a general stampede to vegan eating), but the price on those at $5 seems below parity from the 1970’s when I first came down here for medical school. In contrast, the price of the Miccosukee patchwork little girl skirts that I bought on a starving student diet for $12.50 or so have escalated to $250 (the adult versions are $750). But then, it’s been several generations of tourists telling the next gen ‘when you’re out in the Everglades pick up a couple of those darling patchwork skirts that uncle Al brought back for the kids’.
Anyway, walked down the dock and on to the airboat. Steve’s neck was definitely tanned way beyond being red, his belly showed the evidence of hoisting an occasional one with the boys, and his manner of speech confirmed his answer to Sala’s question as to how he knew the difference between a hammock and the river of grass that we embarked on. ‘ I grew up here’, he said. ‘You know your backyard; I know mine’.
So, the commonality of AIRboats and JETboats is noise and speed. Part of the speed is because it is unexpected. 30 mph on the well-marked highway; no big deal. Through a mixed landscape of grass and small bushes, without windscreens and accompanied by a noise that literally makes it impossible to hear yourself talk, it’s pretty stimulating. But the airboat , at least with expert drivers, may be the only remaining fossil fuel powered vehicle that does not have a seatbelt. It really turns softly, like an airplane caught in a two dimensional dream; an eerie feeling as the driver slews us from side to side to follow trails through the grass, or to depart and slide over a whole clump of grass.
We stopped several times, once at a chickee (living platform) whose thatched huts had to be rebuilt after Katrina leveled everything, that had a thermometer out in the open. It was just topping 100 F on a windy day; Steve assured us 120 was not unusual in the summer. And he remarked that when he was doing rescues, if he could not reach the stranded parties before dark, he would advise them (by cell phone I guess) to get in the water and cover their faces with a shirt, to survive the mosquito swarms.
So, it was the right time, and even though everyone assured us it wasn’t a good time for birds, there were plenty. Egrets of several sizes, anhinga’s diving in the clear water of the canals (called ‘borrow’ canals, because the limestone that is the rock bottom of the river of grass was ‘borrowed’ to make the road you are driving on), and at the Big Cedar Park visitor center, a flock of ibis flying over. 15 foot alligators too. Lazing around on the banks and swimming with a casual grace that you never get to see in those concrete washbasins they give them at the zoo.
And several days ago, Sala got to touch a wild manatee.
So we arrived at our overnight paradise here in time to walk through the spartina and onto the beach, which is just like any beach that happens to be part of 18 miles of white sand and mounds of shells. Yeah, the mounds may be smaller than described in ‘The Lions Paw’( a children’s book which features run away orphans, a search for a shell, and Sanibel-Captiva prominently) but they are still here, enough little bivalves and other mollusk shells to withstand the army of tourists that are visiting just as we are.
There were way more parchment tube worm burrows (Chaetopterus probably) on the beach that I’ve ever seen..perhaps the only indication of oily trouble under the water. But certainly no oil on the beach. The water…well, it’s like SF bay, only pleasantly warm. For that clear blue-green you got go to the Keys.
We’d spent the week in Miami, with Alan making meetings in Boca to talk about medical schools, and Sala playing with Youme and Song (who is maybe 16 months now, with that age’s reserved affect until you pass whatever test she is administering and she cracks the first big smile, instantly bonding you to her). To be fair, we stayed in SOUTH Miami, not downtown, near where David and Edith and Youme and Hai and Song live, and where I lived during my medical school days. So running there in the already warm mornings, sunlight through palms, nut husks and palmetto fronds underfoot, is a romantic return to feeling young and fit and having only the set tasks of school to comfort the brain.
I also got sick on this trip; the same GI thing the whole nation is dealing with, only this was a repeat of a 5 day episode two weeks ago, and lasted only 24 hours. Leaving me so very grateful for feeling good most of the time. And so much more empathic to the difficulty of those who are in a prolonged period of not feeling good.
It’s been a good trip from the relationship point of view. Another persons point of view, particularly when it comes from Sala, who has been part of most of my memories, makes the passage that much more interesting. And as a couple, you have entirely different conversations with new people. Much more detail about babies and clothing, perhaps less caution because our obvious difference makes some kind of statement, gives some kind of reassurance, particularly when traveling in the South. And as Sala says, having that nice young couple in the White House means that people know who she is.
So, a run on the beach when the sun comes up in an hour (very likely), some more searching those piles of shells for the Lions Paw (very unlikely), breakfast on mango and papaya (the black sapote and other exotics became ripe yesterday, and a ripe sapote must be eaten right away, since it passes into corruption far more rapidly than those fruits we encounter in supermarkets) , and then head out into the river of cars to cross the river of grass back to the pad of cement and our flight back to San Francisco, to find Aminta and the little dog.
Aloha
Alan
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