It might seem strange but the city has ordered three quarters of a million dollars of sand for Smather's Beach.
The timing certainly seems odd as we enter hurricane season but I suppose the conventional mind figures summer is the right tome for a splendid sandy beach and that is what Key West has, against all the odds Nature throws up against these small sand-less, rocky islands.
I am not particularly drawn to sandy beaches as a place to recreate, if I were I'd likely live on mainland Florida, among the tea party of the west coast or the interminable traffic of the east coast. As it is the measly sandy strands of the Keys are plenty for me.
Beach goers who expect more get annoyed by the dead seaweed that tends to line the high mark, but the city has an answer for that too. Each morning an agricultural tractor, the only one around here, rumbles up and down making clean that which humans desecrated the day before.
I wonder where else one applies one's tractor driving skills in the farm-free Florida Keys? When I was a youth ploughing a field was one agricultural chore I actually enjoyed among the year round delights of farming. At the end of the day one could see exactly what one had achieved in damp brown dirt exposed to sunlight. I expect cleaning a sandy beach has similar rewards.
The cost of the sand has been spread about almost as much as the sand itself. From the newspaper reports I think, if I calculated correctly the city ends up paying $125,000 with the other costs absorbed by various grants and programs and funding at state and federal levels. 
Bulldozers don't come cheap. Sunset key does the same thing periodically. They order sand from the Bahamas and it comes chugging into the harbor in barges towed from hundreds of miles away so people on the island can disport themselves on the most talcum powder like of silica. May the power of the American Empire never grow less!
Seaweed never grows less either so there will always be a brown ring around the bathtub of the Florida Keys' beaches.
Wind and waves conspire to fill indentations in our rocky coastlines with heaps of dead seaweed. After a hurricane I call the smell of the stuff rotting everywhere across the islands, in every nook and cranny blown there by 130 mile per hour winds, the smell of survival. If you can't smell sulphurous rotting seaweed after a hurricane it means you are either a) evacuated or b) dead.
A beach owner's work is never done.
The timing certainly seems odd as we enter hurricane season but I suppose the conventional mind figures summer is the right tome for a splendid sandy beach and that is what Key West has, against all the odds Nature throws up against these small sand-less, rocky islands.I am not particularly drawn to sandy beaches as a place to recreate, if I were I'd likely live on mainland Florida, among the tea party of the west coast or the interminable traffic of the east coast. As it is the measly sandy strands of the Keys are plenty for me.Beach goers who expect more get annoyed by the dead seaweed that tends to line the high mark, but the city has an answer for that too. Each morning an agricultural tractor, the only one around here, rumbles up and down making clean that which humans desecrated the day before.I wonder where else one applies one's tractor driving skills in the farm-free Florida Keys? When I was a youth ploughing a field was one agricultural chore I actually enjoyed among the year round delights of farming. At the end of the day one could see exactly what one had achieved in damp brown dirt exposed to sunlight. I expect cleaning a sandy beach has similar rewards.The cost of the sand has been spread about almost as much as the sand itself. From the newspaper reports I think, if I calculated correctly the city ends up paying $125,000 with the other costs absorbed by various grants and programs and funding at state and federal levels. Bulldozers don't come cheap. Sunset key does the same thing periodically. They order sand from the Bahamas and it comes chugging into the harbor in barges towed from hundreds of miles away so people on the island can disport themselves on the most talcum powder like of silica. May the power of the American Empire never grow less!Seaweed never grows less either so there will always be a brown ring around the bathtub of the Florida Keys' beaches.Wind and waves conspire to fill indentations in our rocky coastlines with heaps of dead seaweed. After a hurricane I call the smell of the stuff rotting everywhere across the islands, in every nook and cranny blown there by 130 mile per hour winds, the smell of survival. If you can't smell sulphurous rotting seaweed after a hurricane it means you are either a) evacuated or b) dead.A beach owner's work is never done.
3 comments:
It seems you have returned some what to your older style of longer essays with witty prose or I have adapted to your newer, short one (or there is an equilibrium between the two I have not noticed).
Fantastic Blogging of the Fabulous Florida Key.
Thanks but I've lost control of the layout now. Fuck me, if its not one thing its your mother, as the saying goes. I was trying to add a page and all my gadgets went to the bottom of the posts. Urk.
CAKE!!!
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