Last walk in Sanibel

The ugly side of Sanibel

Lest you feel that my morning walks along the Gulf have been absent thoughts about what Alfred Lord Tennyson called, "nature red in tooth and claw," I thought I'd post some of the truth about the beautiful seashore.

Just above the wave's reach stand fisherman reeling in desperate finned creatures with jagged barbed hooks. And each of these million upon million of shells was once filled with a living creature, now gone. Each birds flight does not end with a happy ending, and maybe T.S. Eliot was wrong to wish, "I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas."




Well, as Eliot also wrote, "I have
heard the mermaids singing, each to each," but I've also heard a barrel-chested sunburnt wag shout, "Honey can you grab me a beer, and the sunblock."




Of course, then there's the sand Buddha and gator, and suddenly life seems sweet again.

Another goddamned beautiful morning walk

There's something about Sanibel Island that so un-Florida , a building code which forbids buildings of more than four stories, hundreds of acres of nature preserves, birds of astonishing plummage, dolphins, manatees (while there's plenty here to remind one that it's the kind of state we all sneer at occasionally, and to fill several more Carl Hiassen novels).

Reminds me of Randy Newman's song about LA, "looks like another perfect day...."

Morning walk, day 3

I'm afraid that by titling these posts as I have that I've given them a countdown quality that will severely depress me by day 6.

This morning the ocean had thrown up thousands of live scallops, whelks and cockles. The bivalves were opened to the sunrise as if gasping for moisture in the thin air, when in actuality they were searching for a foothold to propel themselves from the beach and the hungry maws of the maurading seabirds who made quick work of them. In less than an hour most of the gaping shells were empty and beginning to bleach in the sun.

Yesterday we biked through Ding Darling Nature Preserve, where the Eastern acreage had been decimated by a brushfire a few months earlier, but where green life is emerging again. We saw dozens of exotic birds - ibis, herons, stilts, anhingas, egrets and osprey and a few lazy alligators napping in the reeds.

Morning walk, day 2

After a story two days, the sea has thrown up thousands of pieces of flotsam and jetsam onto the beach, but someone's twentieth anniversary apparently has survived the storm and the decades.

My morning walk

Sanibel 7:35 a.m.

A bill to allow gun owners to pack heat at work went to the governor's desk here in Florida today.

Usually, my feelings about this state are best expressed by Vic Chestnutt, except when I'm on this island.

Warm breezes, long beaches, key lime pie, margaritas, bike rides and gliding dolphins. And at least on this side of the causeway, not a single Walmart in sight.