Overlooking The Airport

Rusty is a dog who knows his own mind and he knows tis part of the Little Hamaca City Park does not interest him. Boo hiss, because I like to wander around here at the very end of the road.

Rusty wasn't with me on this lunch break so I decided to wander where he doesn't like to go. Good job I did too as I haven't been here in a while and probably won't again for a long while.

This area of Little Hamaca was transformed into an industrial landscape by the placement of Hawk Missile Batteries during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After that fiasco blew over the missiles left and the battery sites were abandoned to revert very slowly to nature. Below we see the Salt Pond condos at the eastern end of Key West:

One of the things they left behind were these tall piles of rock and gravel which were designed to limit damage in the event the Russians or Cubans landed their own missile here to blow up the Hawk missiles. These berms would have limited the blast and thus the effectiveness of an attack.

In the flatlands of the Keys these protective walls give an ardent photographer  a leg up on the surrounding scenery. It's not often you can climb a dozen feet in the air in the Keys and look around at the flatlands.  Above you can see the remains of Bravo Hawk Missile Battery.

The berms give a view across the salt ponds between Little Hamaca and the airport. The waters are very very thin but kayaks and paddle boards can wander pretty much at will as long as they fon't get too close to the airport.

Time is passing and the shrubs out here are inexorably starting to cover the path that has formed on top of the berms. Seagrapes provide food for birds and the Australian pines  provide shade.

I was quite surprised how many planes were coming and going from the airport on the other side of the pond:

A lot of engines revving and taxiing going on.

The city used to have a paintball field here but that rather fun use of the open space ended and now there's nothing much here except odd piles of discarded dirt and some grass.

There's that nice view of the airport.

And in the far distance the surreal vision of a control tower wrecked in Hurricane Irma in 2017 and never rebuilt. There is a "temporary" control tower in a trailer on Government Road that appears to my jaundiced eye to be rather permanent.

And the planes they come and go. 

For me the fact that the paintball field has gone is good but I don't see this as the best possible use of the place. I wish Rusty would come out here and give me time to scramble up the berms and wander around aimlessly.

I ran out of time waiting for the damned plane to take off picturesquely through the trees so I barely caught it as it lifted up into the sky veering north toward Atlanta (maybe). 

I had a made scramble to get back to work on time. Much slower than an airplane.

Little Hamaca Lunch

Yes I know it looks fearsome and I wouldn't really mind if it kept people away but that isn't in the spirit of public open spaces. I can only say with certainty I have never seen any crocodiles at Little Hamaca, though I have seen these signs all over the place.

The sort of wildlife I encounter is a family like this one out for a picnic. Rusty doesn't much like chickens and will cross the street to avoid them ever since a broody hen ran him down on Appelrouth Lane a few years ago. 

Aside from the perils of being eaten by dinosaurs, Little Hamaca is a good place to go for a little wander and imagine yourself far from civilization on your lunch break. 

You aren't actually far from civilization because the main path through the woods is well built for your convenience.

Check out these magnificent leading lines, known to some people as handrails. I could  come out here even when I was in a wheelchair ...

..and look at the clouds through the trees.

Or look down at the dark waters under the mangroves.

Little Hamaca is named for the term given by early Spanish explorers to humps of dry land in the middle of Everglades marshes. They asked what those clumps of trees were and the natives who lived there called them "hammocks" which mean sleeping places because they hung their beds between the trees that grew out of the dry land.

The Spanish, who had little time for the original residents took the term "hammock" to mean the sleeping arrangement not the entire clump of dry land. Confusion all round of course so today we call string beds hammocks and we give the same name to stands of tall trees growing out of the marshes on mounds of dry land. This billboard would have told the story had it survived Hurricane Irma:

Little Hamaca is the last original stand of mahogany and other dry land trees that grow in the middle of the flooded salt ponds behind the airport.

The boardwalk ends at the Rivera Canal which cuts through New Town, west to east,  to the Cow Key Channel next to Stock Island.

If you want a dock behind your Key West home you can get one here, for a price of course, on Rivera Drive or on the north side of the Key West at Hilton Haven Drive.

Aside from the woods you can also spot the missile battery antennae left over from the ancient Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962:

Back to the car, back to work, rested and relaxed.

Little Hamaca

I had a chance to take Rusty into the woods at Little Hamaca City Park so I did.

I see clumps of  Spanish Moss and wonder who put them there as they seem rather of place at these latitudes and in this heat. I associate Spanish Moss with central and north Florida forests.

Little Hamaca has a reputation as a pick up location for gay men stuck in the closet  by circumstances that once were a way of life. These unfortunates are reputed to roam these woods in the middle of the city but all I can tell you is if they exist they are as unlikely to me as Bigfoot is to any rational thinker.

I see homeless tents and bedding abandoned after a winter's residence, periodically moved along of course but returning insistently. Of gay men furtively looking to pick anyone up I have never seen a  sign.

Still, these rumors are fine by me as any reason to encourage people to stay away means more silence, more shady open space for me. 

When I was recovering from my accident I used to push my walker up and down the paved sections of the park, slightly obsessive possibly and decidedly uncomfortable in wooly slippers, the only footwear that would cover my swollen feet. Those slippers pissed me off every day and made me feel like the stereotype of an old man.  All that work paid off because now I can blunder around at will getting scratched and dusty in the shrubbery. 

And we do. Rusty used to slow down and pace me as I struggled with the walker but these days he goes ahead and waits for me at the bends in the trail. 

I really like having little Hamaca as a small easy to find refuge in the city. 

And really it's not as quiet as it might appear as the airport is next door and unreasonably busy.

Little Hamaca Park

A few pictures from a lovely winter morning at the park in the middle of New Town.