Water Into Wine

It wasn’t Cana, rather it was the Lower Keys, but it was a wedding to which I was invited and glad I was to go, not only to get out but also to make happy some friends who have been very, very good to my wife and caregiver in these difficult weeks past. However Paolo Veronese (“Paul from Verona”) and St John the Evangelist came to mind to one educated at Hogwarts such as myself. 

The weather as we shall see was less benign than that shown in the 1562 depiction of the seminal event in Jesus’ brief but drama filled life. He saved the day at Cana in the second chapter of St John’s gospel:

5 His mother said to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you."  6 Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. 7 Jesus told them, "Fill the jars with water." So they filled them to the brim.  8 Then he told them, "Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter." So they took it.  9 And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from (although the servers who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom  10 and said to him, "Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now."  11 Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.

I don’t think the Benedictine monks who educated me would have given me passing grades were my intent here to claim miraculous powers or to put myself on the Savior’s pedestal but as I arrived at the wedding and my wife parked the car on the cement strip reserved for the handicapped I could see the guests eyeing us up to make sure we qualified. I tried to take their glances with the serenity Jesus surely would have employed. Rusty could have come to add to the cheerful confusion but he doesn’t like crowds so his place on the back seat was replaced by my walker waiting to be deployed but first my wife struggled to get the chair out of the trunk. I pulled my legs out of the car and pivoted into my wheelchair.  Oh yes, I qualify for handicapped parking. 

I wheeled myself over to the reception area where we had to put on flower leis to denote membership in the wedding party. Alcohol was next but in an effort to be good I went non alcoholic which only choice was a glass of water. Jolly good. Very refreshing. The event was on the ground floor of the restaurant, and much of the ground was covered in sand with open air tables crammed into cement  in between the stilts which supported the main restaurant upstairs. The tables were those irritating high stool height which, even when you stand seem mountainously tall. In a wheelchair they were barely at eye level. 

My path through was on the scale of a tank division penetrating the Ardennes forest as guests chairs and belongings were swept aside for the mechanized advance to the bar at the back which gave the only solid surface access to the wedding area which was in a sand pit. They did the wedding itself in mime which was lucky as the soundtrack at the bar was rollicking reggae which I rather enjoyed. 

The weather looked non cooperating from a Floridian perspective with gray clouds and wind and threats of rain but if you were visiting from New England the 76 degree afternoon probably looked heavenly, snow and humidity free. 

Weddings are about one thing and even though it was done in mime from a distance I got the idea from the distant handicapped gallery. “...in sickness and in health...till death do us part.” The usual. Then the miracle happened. My wife brought me a glass of non alcoholic water and -lo and behold!-  it was wine. I threw caution to the wind and I supped. Food was uncovered and a plate of chicken wings traveled across inaccessible sand and appeared on my wheelchair accessible cement pad. I ate, loaves and fishes style, dunno where it came from. 

We were part of a small contingent of locals, the visible proof of the parents’ migration to lower latitudes and for that reason I was glad to be there. However it was awkward. Aside from the spaces which required flexibility the simple greeting “How are you?” generated momentary awkwardness as the stranger suddenly noticed I was in a chair and thus unlikely in their estimation to be doing great. I’m fine thanks. Even though you, you great strapping thing are looking down at me huddled between my wheels...it is possible to be handicapped and doing fine at the same time. But youth has its limitations. 

The photographer fell into conversation with me by accident.  Turns out his grandmother broke her pelvis in her 90s and she still likes to garden. We chatted about my experiences in the hospital and his grand mother’s trials. I told the usual jokes about rehab and recovery and I felt a slight bond until I overheard him repeating the story to his wife with wonder in  his voice as though no one in a chair should be capable of making light of his situation. People surprise me. It’s not all blood and guts as you recover sometimes you laugh. Being alive feels pretty good even through rehab.  I missed the comfort of familiarity. I missed Encompass Health.  There I’ve said it.  We were all in wheelchairs. 

The staff were massively helpful and got the empty chair back to the car while I tonked my way back through the Ardennes forest of high chairs using my walker. It caused some distraction as kind people leapt like scalded cats as they noticed the cripple approaching. 

I did my duty. I drank I ate I witnessed the public commitment.  I went out in public a cripple and survived the apartness. I do it again on Thursday at a gathering of people to feast. This has to get easier. 

Nature

If you want to know what the back country looks like off Highway One, this is it:

I took these pictures on different days in different places.

 Rusty the hot dog.

 Side roads always run into dead ends.

 You can hear cars coming from a way away.

 In winter it's harder to find roads free of the endless brigades of Spandex clad cycle racers.

Winters bring more bird life as migrations tend to settle around here in the cold months.

Rusty looks so downcast. He's actually not, he's just tired.

High, High Tide

It seems that every high tide some of the back wood trails go under water. Like this:

I took these pictures around the recent full moon and the water you are looking at is usually gravel and dirt. It really is. Yet these days it seems to end up under water with greater frequency.  Which is not to say occasional exceptional high waters didn't flood the mangroves. But now it seems to happen too often. 

Luckily Rusty enjoys splashing around so I don't let six inches of water stop us. However you have to wonder what sea level rise will do for these islands over the next decade or two.

 Crocs are an invaluable tool for these expeditions.

 And a camera to wile away the time.

It is wonderfully peaceful out here and even though the wind carries the sounds of cars from Highway One a few miles away, this is as isolated as you can get.  

Rusty likes the splashing around. I read my Kindle perched against the branches of a buttonwood tree.

 Miles and miles of nothing.

 The road remains above water - so far.

But around my home signs of the supermoon high tide were visible in the street the morning after, and I find the invasion of salt water rather scary:

Where Crocs should be less necessary.

I wonder what the future will bring. A frequent thought I am having these days.

Tarpon Belly Key

From July 30th 2014, a reprint of a fine adventure:

Robert was on a nostalgia  kick yesterday, so despite some setbacks we had a great time buzzing around the back country in our little boats, each meditating and ruminating as we sped across the water individually, talking when our paths reconnected on land. Robert and Salty Dog at 23mph crossing Cudjoe Bay: 

The stilt houses, typical of the shorelines around here. What you can't see is the massive influx of people in the Keys this week for the Great Lobster Kill today and tomorrow, known as mini season.

 Niles Channel Bridge arcing gracefully 40 feet above the water. I used to come out here quite often when I lived on Ramrod as this is a wide, deep, and direct path to Tarpon Belly Key.

Once under the bridge we turned west and aimed for the buildings which on land line Highway One. We had to get fuel...after a fashion. 

Robert had proposed  a pause in the proceedings to take lunch, I seconded the  motion so we stopped at The Wharf on Summerland Key for lunch.

 

The Wharf offers an organic menu of food and drink and while I stepped out and tried the tamales, well worth while, Robert took his default position and went with the cheeseburger, which seemed to hit the spot:

Salty Dog was perfectly behaved lounging in the shade with a giant bowl of iced water. We lounged, it was hot. Yes,. I know I enjoy heat but it was hot. Robert was in charge of navigation, only until I explained I used to do this trip quite a bit up Niles Channel. 

The bridge was looking good. I love that arch plus you get  some excellent sunrises from the top.

We resumed our separate paths running smoothly  across the dark blue waters. I have the more comfortable boat with a center console on my Dusky and  a wheel to steer by, while Robert was giving himself a Popeye arm as he put it working his tiller steering at speed. I took the time to meditate a bit as we drove in a long straight line up the channel and I started to wonder, as one does, why Homer called his seas "wine dark," a phrase that has become as famous as it is puzzling. I have never sailed a sea that I could have confused for a glass of wine but scholars have discussed this subject at some intricate length Lapham's Quarterly.

The image Homer hoped to conjure with his winelike sea greatly depended upon what wine meant to his audience. While the Greeks likely knew of white wine, most ancient wine was red, and in the Homeric epics, red wine is the only wine specifically described. Drunk at feasts, poured onto the earth in sacred rituals, or onto the ashes around funeral pyres, Homeric wine is often mélas, “dark,” or even “black,” a term with broad application, used of a brooding spirit, anger, death, ships, blood, night, and the sea. It is also eruthrós, meaning “red” or the tawny-red hue of bronze; and aíthops, “bright,” “gleaming,” a term also used of bronze and of smoke in firelight. While these terms notably have more to do with light, and the play of light, than with color proper, Homeric wine was clearly dark and red and would have appeared especially so when seen in the terracotta containers in which it was transported. “Winelike sea” cannot mean clear seawater, nor the white splash of sea foam, nor the pale color of a clear sea lapping the shallows of a sandy shore.

Enough of this existential rubbish, we arrived at Tarpon Belly Key, but this time from behind. I got to see part of this island (technically three islands as it is cut across by two canals) I had not seen before. I usually land on the west facing  pebbly beach but this time we draped our anchors over the horizontal cement bridge support still solid, still in place across the mouth of the easternmost channel. The interior of the middle island was as wooded as any trail I've walked in the Keys:

With a big smile Robert found the rusty remnants of an axle and an engine block of a truck used to shuttle supplies across Tarpon Belly when the island was operating as a shrimp farm decades ago. Robert knew a guy who once drove this:

Today is opening day of lobster mini season, a two day slaughter designed to allow recreational anglers a chance to score some Florida lobster before official commercial lobster season starts next month (and continues into the Spring). Commercial lobster season is a pain from a navigational point of view as lobster pot floats sprout like toadstools in all near shore waters and commercial trappers maneuver their boats like un-muffled tractors at all hours, backing and forthing to check their traps, but mini season is torture for local residents.

Mini season is a boost for local businesses so as much as residents moan its never going away but it attracts a huge proportion of yahoos, people who have forgotten any manners they may have had before they were lured here  by lobster. There are rules (no hunting in canals or near shore) and the body of the lobster must be at least three inches long and not a female carrying eggs. Astonishingly enough law enforcement find numerous violators. Mini season is chaos. I don't think their laundry lines enhanced Tarpon Belly, frankly.

Our side of the island was silent and empty as we strolled around in the appalling heat following frisky young Salty Dog on his explorations. Our anchorage was perfect as the current was flowing south out of the canal holding our boats away from the cement. 

Looking west, we crossed the bridge and walked on the easternmost island, a place rich with other memories for Robert.

"I last walked here 35 years ago" he had remarked as we landed. Now he eagerly led me through the undergrowth to another spot he hadn't seen since he was last here in his twenties with two buddies. We had fun, Robert said with a  twinkle in his eye as he told me about their exploits at a time when few people came and hung out here.

Yes we climbed the mountain of rock and gravel, we estimated it easily at 15 feet high, as high as the tallest point in key West, Solares Hill.  Above we see Robert descending, rather inelegantly like a skier on one ski, while I stayed on top in the rarefied atmosphere of the death zone because I discovered my Verizon phone got two bars here at the summit and I could send my wife in California an actual picture of the view across Tarpon Belly Key. 

You decide if the view was worth the effort. The Himalayas weren't in it. And there we see Fat Albert the blimp keeping an eye on things in the Florida Straits. I was slightly surprised I still had to look up and tjhat the blimp wasn't  flying at my eye level.

After I scrambled down, wishing someone made crampons for Crocs, I noticed I could still see fat Albert from our improvised dock. Honestly I think the view is slightly better from here. Which detracts nothing from our mountaineering achievement. Salty Dog went up and down twice, without I should note, the assistance of supplemental oxygen.

We dropped our mountaineering identities and got back in the boats. Robert did Important Things with the waterproof charts while I stared vacantly back at the island trying to discern, in vain, the location of the mountain amongst the foliage.

I am tempted to draw a discreet veil over the rest of yesterday's activities but I have to confess that at a point not too far from Robert's place my engine conked out. Again! Grr! We towed a bit and sometimes it ran for a bit so we planed a while too, so we got back to Robert's dock in good order if quite a  bit late.

We fiddled with it for a while in the appalling heat, and I left it ultimately at Robert's with plans maybe to give in and taker it to a rather good Yamaha mechanic I have used previously. "Something electrical" Robert opined, so we shall see.

I ended up  on Robert's power  cat getting a  ride home - again - but it was in all respects an excellent day of exploration. I barely got a nap before I had to go to work.  But that was another adventure.