When we arrived at Fort Jefferson for our camping trip we got our briefing on the boat from this dude in the hat and then we were let loose on the camp site. After that we pretty much saw no one else in uniform except a rather friendly dude who came by to check on our fee paying techniques, and he got hung up in an extended conversation with Carol, one of two old timers in our party, so the rest of us didn't get to speak with him much. But there are people living in the fort year round, that I know. They have hidey holes in the walls:
And some of them have little balconies overlooking the western sunset, which is, I might add, a spectacular view:
I believe the fort's commandant's house now houses the superintendent inside the parade ground:
And they have all manner of mod-cons (modern conveniences) thanks to satellite technology:
Though electrons need their own passageways even in old buildings:
And let's not forget the value of old-fangled infernal combustion. There are huge generators rumbling day and night,keeping the lights on whether you want them or not, and as their exhausts grind away near the campground I could see lots of advantages to going with renewable energy:
But I am told there is a certain difference of opinion amongst the old time hardliners who like their hydrocarbons burned the old fashioned way. So at night, when the fort is officially closed:
The generators hum and the lights keep burning:
Including the old lighthouse, now reduced to the second-rate status of a modest "harbor light," atop the fort:
And also, rather spectrally, one can see dim lights shining from within the fort when all good souls are tucked up in bed, except for star gazers and drinkers in the campground, and apparently insomniacs inside the fort:
As I understand it there are eight national park personnel on duty at the fort including law enforcement rangers. We saw three of them rounding up a group of young people on the moat wall. I was up to my eyes in salt water at the time but later someone found out they had been spotted picking up pieces of glass bottles from a beach and they got themselves a $300 fine and a trip back to their boat on the ranger's launch.
The little museum next to the (air conditioned! Thank you generators...) gift shop shows the fort's own collection of these things and they don't want people walking off with them. For the most part life at the fort is very free and unencumbered for visitors, you seem to have the place pretty much to yourself, especially if you are camping or staying on a boat which is how you get pets to the fort as pets aren't allowed on the ferry. Unless your Dad is the captain and your name is Salty, then you get to ride out on the Yankee Freedom and play with your teddy bear:
Like they do at any other park, personnel at the fort guard their privacy:
Aside from the residential areas there are very few parts of the fort that are off limits and those that are, should be observed for safety reasons.This place is pretty much wide open and to keep it that way the elementary common sense safety rules need to be followed:
Then there are signs that have been carefully stenciled to keep order, day use here, campers
there:
And there are things like Bird Key and adjoining Long Key where the sooty terns and brown noddies nest in the summer.
Bird Key was joined to Garden Key, the island where the fort is located, but storms blew out the sandy land bridge. Nevertheless people like to get close to the birds.
The rule is look but don't land. And on the subject of landing. Cubans show up here from time to time in their "chugs," which are home built boats used to escape from Cuba. Loggerhead Key with the main lighthouse on it is three miles west of the fort and that is the last US soil until you reach Brownsville or New Orleans or points in between and it does happen that migrants land in these islands. They leave their boats behind to prove it.
The rule is if the Cubans set foot on dry land they get to stay in the US so they work hard at making the crossing in anything that floats. Untold numbers die because the Gulf Stream is a hazardous body of water. Speaking as someone who has sailed across it a dozen times in well found boats it can get extremely difficult in any kind of contrary wind. How they cope riding crap like this is hard to know:
The supply boat which runs between Key West and the fort takes the migrants back to the city for processing. It's all done with boats at Fort Jefferson, including the work of the contractors who are currently restoring portions of the fort with all their construction supplies and orange netting and hard hats and tinker toy tractors and trailers:
In some respects it's like a space station, relying for life support on what they bring and keep with them. And the systems designed to support eight have to support these extra bodies as well as they get their work done. But aside from work there is recreation after a fashion:
And there are a few less driven occupants of the 16 acre island who just hang out and watch the rush pass them by:
But for those of us here for a few precious hours or days there is a need to visit the inevitable concession stand there to pick up a few baubles:
A monogrammed cap for me, turtle earrings for the wife and postcards with a special park service stamp to mail around the world later. Then there is some cool air available while watching the brief,rather commercial movie about the park...
...and check out some of the found treasures, the unconsidered trifles found lying around the fort:
And then. as we strolled back to the ferry on our last afternoon crossing the moat:
I watched the hordes moving purposefully across the day use area, that patch of scrub grass that falls silent after the ferries leave sat 2:45pm, and I wonder how they keep order and peace at the fort, without a presence, without barking orders, and by dint simply of the desire of the people to be there and enjoy their space. One wishes we could carry that sentiment home with us in a bottle, or on an ear ring.
When we arrived at Fort Jefferson for our camping trip we got our briefing on the boat from this dude in the hat and then we were let loose on the camp site. After that we pretty much saw no one else in uniform except a rather friendly dude who came by to check on our fee paying techniques, and he got hung up in an extended conversation with Carol, one of two old timers in our party, so the rest of us didn't get to speak with him much. But there are people living in the fort year round, that I know. They have hidey holes in the walls:
Sugarloaf Boulevard cuts dead due south from the Sugarloaf Lodge on Highway One. The road slices through a nice suburban subdivision of expansive homes and flourishing lawn covered tropical grdens, all worthy of an essay of their own. At the end of the Boulevard the paved road takes a turn to the right (west) and heads off down a seris of invirgorating turns to dead end into a pathway that follows the old road, now overgrown, to the first trestle bridge, now collapsed, a road that used to parallel the beach out to Boca Chica. A left turn at the southern end of the boulevard brings one to a gate:
I walked the Loop Road itself just recently, but this essay follows the old state road all the way up to the broken bridge that used to connect with the road that comes down from Highway One near Mangrove Mama's restaurant which I wrote about a while back (November 9th, 2007, "Paved Road Ends"). I was going to cycle the old state road but it was a lovely afternoon and I chose to ride the Bonneville instead, leaving me on foot for my explorations.
Sugarloaf Key is low and watery and in these parts water is everywhere, as is mud which turns to water in the rainy season.
Unfortunately while the mud is wet and transitioning into water it gives off a particular smell that I can best describe as "rich barnyard." I grew up around farm animals and this particular type of methane gas smells to me nothing quite like anything so much as a pig's byre. A pig that has been eating table scraps and plant material in addition to it's commercial feed. Just like the ones I grew up around in Italy. It is a fact of life around the salt ponds of the Keys, just another romantic image of the Keys I have now shattered, for which I apologise.
There is evidence at the beginning of the old state road where it branches out beyond the Loop Road, that it was once paved, and lumps of asphalt appear from time to time along the gravel roadway. Judging by the squared off edges of this body of water I imagine this was once a gravel pit or quarry of some sort for the innumerable new roads built around the islands:
I hadn't tramped very far before the road turned into a track and pretty soon became a narrow pathway through the encroaching shrubbery:
And then to my delight I found myself walking through amature mangrove forest. It was surprisingly cool in the shade, with a light southeast breeze blowing through the trees and across the salt water they were growing out of, it felt like outdoor air conditioning:
And I saw a bird, though being the pathetic ornithologist I am, I have no idea what it was:
After the mangroves the ground seemed to get a little higher and drier, which doesn't mean much in these islands, but enough to change the composition of the bushes:
And it was along here that the silence got to em a bit. I kept hearing this rustling sound alongside the trail as I strode along. There were no sounds at all aside from the "crunch-swish" of my sneakers as I walked. But then I would hear rustling in the bushes, but as soon as I stopped the rustling stopped and I started to think that either I was a character in a cartoon strip being pursued by Wiley Coyote, or I was imagining things. I'd walk a bit and stop and the rustling would follow and stop. This went on for longer than I care to remember until one time I stopped suddenly and heard a loud clang from the bushes nearby. Then I figured it out- land crabs. One klutz must have fallen off his perch on an old discarded can and the mystery was solved.
It took me about half an hour but finally I reached my destination: the cut in the road that I had only previously seen from the north side of the creek:
The road on the other side was the one I rode on my Bonneville in my essay "Paved Road Ends" November 9th 2007. The creek looked as lovely as Miranda has described it to me, memories of a youthful conch. And from this shore I had a better view of it than I had from the north shore, looking off to the east...
...and to the west:
Without getting my feet, and a good deal more of myself, wet in the fast running salt water "creek" I had to turn back and return the way I had come.
So I did, but not before resting for a moment on a heavy wooden bench that was sitting in the roadway. It was long and heavy and made of wood and I have no idea how anyone got it there, nor why. But it did occur to me, since I was seen wearing pink crocs at Fort Jefferson, that my wardrobe has made me a bit self conscious. Here are my usual walking shoes:
Whcih are I think normal enough, though no doubt Allen Madding will have lots to say about riding a motorcyle wearing shorts and sneakers. The path home was of course the same as the one out but it looked a little different with the sun in my eyes:
The sun shining through the trees gave me cause to meditate on the meaning of the word "dappled" as I walked. My brother in law Bob McGahey, lives near Asheville in North Carolina and the fire department in Burnsville wanted to give all rural roads a name to make it easier to find them in the event of an emergency, a sentiment I can sympathise with, right enough. He grumped about it for a while but then he and my wife's sister Geeta, came up with a name for their lane and he wanted to call it "Dappled Dharma Way" which I thought was charming. In the end they had to settle on "Dharma Way" and every time I see something that looks dappled by the sun I think of this road in Celo Community:
Even though I am on this path in Sugarloaf Key, a place where people like to walk, enough that they clear a way from time to time apparently as witnessed by the limb removed:
And so back to the Loop Road all paved and empty in the middle of this wilderness.
Though I should add it wasn't always so. A reader Keith Krensberger sent me these pictures from an automobile rally on Loop Road from 1974, and delightful period pieces they are too:
I look forward to hearing more about it at dinner next week.