Mangrove Rusty

To live in the Florida Keys, this group of islands said to number 1700 total specks of land, you have to accept certain things as ineluctable truths, one of them being that the topography is never going to change. This isn't earthquake country, or earth slide country, nor will volcanoes spew more land into the ocean. Around here the only likelihood is that later this century rising tides will make these islands uninhabitable. Meanwhile we have this:

And we have dogs. Rusty doesn't worry himself too much about rising tides. When the land runs our or gets too wet he avoids the problem. He enjoys the cold the few times we have traveled into frosty country and he likes woods and hills but in the mangroves he runs like the wind.  Places that you think would confound a double jointed snake, my Carolina Dog slips through with ease.

I walk the trails and he criss-crosses my path occasionally allowing me to spot his big curved tail furry like a banner riding through the bushes. And these bushes are what constitute woods in the Florida Keys, lumps of limestone and coral that can barely support saplings never mind majestic stands of trees. And I discovered recently not everyone knows  what a  mangrove looks like.

These are the roots of the red mangrove, the creepy feral jungly mangrove that everyone I thought, had heard of or at least seen in the movies. They propagate by dropping seed pods into salt water or by walking their roots across the ground then drilling down as they go. Fearsome stuff because these roots will close the trail eventually:

I was at work and I got a call from a national crisis support hotline reporting a  client, said to be in Key West was thinking about committing suicide. It was one of those hours-long pursuits trying to figure out a location for the wandering lost soul and pairing him up with a searching police officer. In the end he was fine and the story went away like so many 911 calls do, into the vault of my memory. However one feature stuck in my head so much so I determined to write an essay on the subject.

One of the crisis counselors called back with an update to advise us the lost client told them rather vaguely he was on a beach on North Roosevelt in the mangroves. A beach? On the boulevard? In the mangroves?  Okay then, we sent officers off to hunt for the depressed man. Meanwhile the counselor on the line asked me tentatively: Does that make sense? Well I said there isn't any beach on North Roosevelt but there are clumps of mangroves. Mangroves she said interrogatively, I was wondering that they are... I wanted to package up some of the leaves of the red mangrove, the ones that turn salt water into fresh for the plant to use and send them to her wherever she was. Somewhere mangrove-free apparently.

There are times when I wish I had something other than mangroves and their cousins the buttonwoods to look at. I was looking back at pictures of our road trip to Quebec and Vermont, Rusty checking out the St Lawrence River...

...and running through the deciduous woods of the Isle d'Orleans...

I know he likes these wildernesses, these familiar South Florida landscapes:

But I wonder if he misses the lush landscapes of the north, like the cider orchards outside the City of Quebec:

There again beauty is where you find it.

And we enjoy our walks together even in these mysterious mangrove forests. Which as you can see are as flat as the proverbial pancake:

A well earned gin and tonic for the dog:

And cold tap water for me.

Rusty A Year On

Facebook reminded me I got Rusty last February 20th and in an amazingly short time, eight days after Cheyenne died.

Rusty is completely different from Cheyenne and cannot really be compared. She came from a home, not a very nice one but she was never a stray and she lived out her life with me in a form of retirement, as is proper. She always seemed to keep me at arm's length even though in the critical moments of her life she always sought me out. Public displays of affection annoyed her.

Rusty is young energetic and curious. He is intelligent in ways I have rarely seen in a dog. I enjoy his company immensely.

He hates to be photographed so I snatch a long distance telephoto picture when I can.

He has a lot of the predator in his genetic make up.

He is amazing at moving through the convoluted mangrove woods hereabouts.  He pops off the trail and circles around  appearing silently in front of me once again.

The warped and twisted trunks and roots of the mangroves are no obstacle to him.

The south Florida heat doesn't bother him much at all though I am quick to whip out the water bowl which he usually ignores.

He is an independent little dog, and puts up with the leash because I say so, though he could bite through it in two seconds. He did that once to come to my rescue when he thought my trainer was attacking me while we were working out together. Sean thinks he is very cool. 

He loves being out in the woods and every morning we spend an hour or two on the trails checking stuff out before the world is awake. It's the best way to calm down after a night at work.

He is learning to be friendly with large dogs he meets and his confidence in the last year has grown by leaps and bounds.

When people see him trotting confidently about they leap to the conclusion that he is a stray which of course he isn't; he just gets there faster than me.

He has the run of the house and there is no fence outside so when he pops out through his dog door he is free to leave any time. He hasn't run off so far. I like to think he is happy at home with me.

He has been great fun to get to know and these days I am encouraging him to stick close to me around the house, teaching him to enjoy being touched and petted. At first I thought he didn't want to be touched but I have discovered he just didn't know it was allowed so now he is always choosing to lay down next to me and flop on his back to indicate a need for a tummy rub. I am putty in his hands.

He is at home anywhere.

He is not much driven by food but he did find a chew on the road and he played with it for a while. I don't fuss too much about found food, I figure he knows what he likes and I don't want to put my hand there anyway.

I look forward to many great years ahead.

And no, Cheyenne is not forgotten.

Good girl, suffering the heat.

Niles Road, Summerland

I wanted some peace and quiet that evening at home so I figured a little run outdoors might put the little tyke down for the night. I was right.

I drove to the end of Niles Road on Summerland and parked the car in between the vehicles and boat trailers of people out hunting lobster on mini season...

 The old wooden bridge to nowhere is still standing in the channel.

 I took this picture in 2008 and you'll notice no wooden ladder on the end of the bridge:

Nowadays someone has built the structure on the end of the bridge that you see below:

Cheyenne liked this spot too, at low tide:

That ladder makes climbing up easier I suppose but I managed in the past just using the spikes hammered into the uprights. I'm tough.

I walked the bridge in 2008 and I have no idea why they ever built such a robust structure as there is no sign of habitation or even a road at the north end. I shall go back one day with Rusty and see what we can find:

It was hot, we rested in the shade.

 And so home...

I miss Cheyenne still but I am glad Rusty is in my life.

Sugarloaf 939A South

I am starting to think Rusty expects me to pull a completely new walk out of my head every time we leave the house. These days he waits for me at the top of the stairs when I get home around 6:20 in the morning and I barely get off the Bonneville before this little ball of fur is bouncing off my chest. 

I drive Rusty to the Sugarloaf Boulevard walk at the south end of the island but this time, once we got past the jumping bridge we went straight and ignored the paved loop.

The bridge was the scene of excess, oddly enough several pairs of dainty black socks were lying on the ground in wet heaps alongside empty cans and cardboard debris. 

My goal was a 45 minute walk through the mangroves on the old roadway to the scene of the former bridge. Had that been in place we could have walked all the way back to Highway One at Mangrove Mama's. As it was we paused and when Rusty was finished with his inspection we retraced our steps, a meandering walk back the way we came.

The channel connects Cudjoe Bay to the waters in the middle of  Sugarloaf Key. Head east to go to my house, head west and eventually you will reach the marina at Sugarloaf Lodge. Here it is a deep, fast flowing, desolate salt water stream between mangroves.

The dark gray skies broke and started to brighten bringing warmer temperatures and sharper colors. 

The bushes are closing in on the old roadway making the track a one lane path.

While I played with the camera Rusty ducked in and out of the buttonwood trees sticking his nose imprudently into land crab holes.

As the old roadbed sank closer to sea level the buttonwoods gave way to red mangroves, the ones that like to live directly in the water. These trees are the roots that form the green island blobs you can see either side of the highway. There is no land there, no dirt to speak of, no way to walk properly. 

Many years ago I was caught in the Gulf Stream by a sudden winter storm, half way to Key West from Mexico. We were too far south to reach the Dry Tortugas, and a nearby boat chose to park (heave to) and wait the weather out. My wife and I decided to turn and run before the storm, losing ground but escaping the shipping lanes between Florida and Cuba. The storm blew us into the Cuban north shore at a point of my choosing, a wide open bay, deep enough to get out of the wind and waves, dotted with small islands (Minas de Matahambre, west of Santa Lucia), so we could avoid meeting officialdom and having to explain ourselves. We anchored between some islands and found our dogs a place to walk amidst a profusion of mangrove roots. I came to hate these things, so impossible to walk among, so useless to humans, so important to fish. We spent a week ducking amongst them waiting for a change of weather, we were never discovered and our dogs survived on the leanest of walks at low tide picking their way among mangroves. I think of them when I see these sights.

I also remember walking Cheyenne down here when she was younger and that was such a long time ago. Rusty seemed to enjoy it much more than my old Labrador ever did. He sniffed everywhere, enjoying the woods much more than urban walks.

The walk ended up being two hours long and it was properly sunny by the time we were finished. 

It was hot but lovely.

Approaching the bridge we came across signs of civilization still not quite ready to fade away.

And what would civilization be without graffiti?

And a water swing:

The two hour walk required a day of rest and deep sleep for young Rusty. I had to go to work because I am older and tougher. And because I am not a dog living a dog's life.