Big Pine Woods

There is a certain air of exhaustion that pervades work these days. Key West is bulging with Spring Break people and will be doing so for the next several weeks. The numbers of people partying on Duval is quite astonishing and even up in the Communications Center we are feeling the pressure of many more calls each day than on a usual busy winter shift. We have a new crop of trainees in Dispatch which is rewarding as they close in on completing six months of training but finishing them up in these high pressure days (and nights) makes work more exhausting than usual. I get home, walk Cheyenne for her dawn stroll and collapse into bed in a coma.The Overseas Highway continues to be packed with cars rolling into town and back out too which makes moving between islands a slow and ponderous affair. To get out into nature finally is a just reward for being around people so much.I don't know what I'd do if I lived someplace where the skies are gray, the trees leafless and the curbs on the streets covered in slushy wet snow. I guess I'd put up with it, as one does.How someone got this trash into the woods behind a barrier I don't know. Either they took the barrier down, easily done with a wrench or humped their household trash on their backs, but in any event here it is making the wildlife refuge look extra pretty:This is how it is meant to look:

It's not a terribly long trail through the woods, but starting from the Winn Dixie Plaza which is the heart of commerce on Big Pine Key one comes out on the back roads of Big Pine. I've always liked the look of this place with it's stone wall and banana trees and steep sloping roof.Though why anyone would want to prune a sea grape to within an inch of it's trunk I'm not sure, though, for as pretty as these trees are, their leaves sure do make a mess when they fall. They are big and there are lots of them on a fully developed sea grape.And so we took off on the paved road to new adventures.