Old Bahia Honda

It was only when I arrived at the southern end of the old Bahia Honda Bridge that I understood why I had been wanting to come back here and take a walk. There is a particular pleasure in standing up on the top of a cliff, be it ever so small, and looking out across the water.An enduring memory I have of our last trip to Puerto Rico was that of standing on the front lawn of our hotel on the eastern side of the island and looking out across the rolling greenery down to the water. It was a moment that made me appreciate just how flat these islands really are.We live at sea level, and there's nothing wrong with that, given that I will be long dead by the time the sea rises to engulf these islands, but the chance for a view from the top of a thirty-foot hill is something that needs to be enjoyed from time to time. The old Flagler Bridge has been cut off from land at this end but it is possible to walk onto the bridge from the Bahia Honda State Park end and enjoy an elevated view. That is not however, the same as walking among the windblown wild grasses, while looking down at the water below.Cheyenne took a quick look inside the old pump station alongside the original water pipe laid by the Navy in World War Two. Prior to the pipe Key West survived on rain water and probably should return to that method to preserve water supplies. I've lived primarily off my rain water cistern for years.
Just as the walls of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas are protected by a moat, so was the installation of the old pipe. However the passage of time has eroded the limestone behind the moat and the resulting shapes are quite fantastic.The pump house looks like it belongs somewhere else in a different time. Walking around it puts me in mind of the old abandoned lighthouses in the Far Out Islands of the Bahamas, structures built by Victorian engineers in distant colonies now outmoded and replaced by simple solar panels and electric lights.
One marvels at the work that was done to secure water supplies in war time. Public works and infrastructure were valued in those days.

God and the engineer that installed it only know what that plinth was for among the grasses.
Cheyenne was busy as usual.
Hurricanes in the Atlantic have been creating strong east winds in Florida. However in these shallow reef-strewn waters large waves are hard to whip up any bigger than this.
I never cease to be amazed how pretty this part of the world is. I spent two hours walking here with Cheyenne and a few cars stopped, took a few pictures and disappeared leaving us completely alone.
I read the paper in a shady spot behind a stone wall, out of the wind. Cheyenne took a refreshing salt water bath.
I am very fond of my dog, and we've been together less than a year.
It would be a terrible tease to leave this spot without one decent picture of the famous bridge.
Here we are with a panoramic view back at our proper eye level.
The pump station and all it's graffiti.
Me trying not to look more stupid than usual.
One last look at the Straits of Florida...

...and someone else can have this place to themselves.

Scotch Mist

Tropical Storm Nicole is moving east following the preferred hurricane route this year of aiming toward Bermuda. Lucky them, even though this one appears to be fading fast.I woke early after a night spent sitting up doing not much at all at work. There were a few calls for people sleeping on porches, drunks and vagrants presumably who hoped not to get spotted as the rain came drumming down from time to time. Life in Old Town Key West is one unpleasant adventure after another. It seems if you aren't rowing over parking or loud parties with your neighbors you stand an excellent chance of having your bicycle or your garden furniture stolen or even of having someone decide to use your porch as a bedroom. I get a jaundiced view of life in police dispatch.After breakfast Cheyenne looked at me as though it was time for a walk. Great, thought I, this is one of those days that being owned by a dog is a total pain in the ass. We set out for Big Pine Key, a place where perhaps we could find a not too flooded street to walk.As I turned onto Highway One it was obvious the forecast of north winds had been supplanted by actual east winds which were blowing a solid wall of rain at us. I turned north onto Middle Torch Key to see if we could snatch a walk before the impending downpour. Wikipedia has a nice description of the term Scotch Mist: The term given to a light, steady drizzle, the name being typical of the Scottish penchant for understatement. Loathe though I am to offer up definitions, I could not describe it better myself. I am not fond of rain and I was not enjoying Cheyenne's bathroom stroll. All this and a bag of warm dog shit to carry around...She was enjoying finding the exact right spot. For some reason this cormorant decided we were invading his space and he seemed to think it was a better option to flap off into the teeth of the storm.In the back of my mind I have this romantic notion that perhaps a cold winter storm or a snowfall or a blizzard or something might be fun at least for a short while, simply as a change from a bland diet of warm or warmer. I read a couple of Alaska blogs in my web list and I marvel at how people in the Arctic Circle flens bloody animals while dressed in clothing so heavy no one in Key West would own such an outfit, far less wear one. They smile contentedly at the camera, collars open as though enjoying a brisk summer day at the beach. The countryside more closely resembles a fluffed white bed sheet than anything I would remotely consider to be proper land and dirt and plants. "Hmm, " I think to myself, "I could manage that, I know I could." Then I find myself stepping out into an 80 degree afternoon with horizontal slashing rain and I wonder why my dog can't spend an afternoon curled up with me and a book.
Claustrophobia is not something I think about much but when the great outdoors is reduced to a wall of water and blackened skies I find myself getting antsy.

We drove to the end of the road on Big Torch, some eight miles from Highway One and found a momentary respite from the rain which had yet to catch up to us. We walked in the bushes and pretended it was just another day in the Lower Keys. Bored youngsters had spread electric colored graffiti on the barrier at the end of the road and had drilled rubber doughnut holes into the asphalt. We were alone with the wind and the patter of drizzle on the leaves and the cawing of some miserable bird lamenting it's fate in a raucous drone across the bushes. It felt like the end of the world.

Wet and droopy we got back in the car.
Really, Tropical Storm Nicole, all of 35 miles per hour was a total bust. We had some sunshine before dark with the promise of more warm rain for another twenty four hours. I must be a terrible weather pansy.

Middle Torch Afternoon

I am sniffing out Autumn in the Florida Keys. Mind you, I'm not actually finding it yet. Temperatures are hovering around 90 degrees mid afternoon, though all the hurricane activity in the Atlantic and off Mexico is producing nice breezes, which blow away the humidity. However the sun, as Chuck pointed out, is lower in the sky and has changed the quality of the light.Thus it is Cheyenne and I are starting to look at longer walks in the woods, places we haven't seen since last Spring. MTK on the light pole stands for Middle Torch Key. Torch wood is some kind of hardwood that apparently burns nicely but I would know what a torch wood looked like if you hit me over the head with it. This street at the north end of Middle Torch Key and is a backwater of a backwater. It has just a few houses and they aren't all packed with people. Check out these serious and proper hurricane shutters. Let the wind blow and the coconuts fly! By the way storm season doesn't officially end until November so there's plenty of time for me for a hurricane to come by and force me to pull ours out. Just to make this little street perfect the opposite side to the homes is no longer open to development. This sign is Uncle Sam muscling in and outlawing free market destruction of the mangroves. Sell them off and pay off the national debt I say! Bloody government. That would be the same government that maintains a pretty nice road around here for everyone to use. Private enterprise did put up this rather nice wall.The paved street ended and we found ourselves in a sylvan paradise. I ambled, Cheyenne ran back and forth sniffing madly. God was in his heaven, and all's right with the world. The thing about these trails is that they are shaded but they are also protected from the cooling breezes. In winter that's great as a poor shrivelled up resident needs cover from the cold north winds. This time of year a breeze is nice.
Paved road above.

Dirt road below.
Jungle, Keys style.
The funny thing is, I used to dread winters in California, the damp, the rain, the mud. Here winter is just a different season, enjoyable in it's way.

Even if it's too cold to swim in winter it's just right for getting lost in the mangroves. Cheyenne doesn't know it yet, but in a few weeks the suffocating heat of summer will be gone and she will be ready to walk a lot further...I am getting ready myself for less swimming and more walking.

Tropical Storm Warning

TROPICAL DEPRESSION SIXTEEN LOCAL STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE KEY WEST FL
157 PM EDT TUE SEP 28 2010
.WATCHES/WARNINGS...
A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE FOLLOWING
LOCATIONS...MONROE UPPER KEYS...MONROE MIDDLE KEYS AND MONROE
LOWER KEYS.

FOR MARINE INTERESTS...A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR
ALL OF FLORIDA KEYS COASTAL WATERS.
...PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
DUE TO THE WEAK AND DISORGANIZED TROPICAL SYSTEM...ALL PEOPLE IN THE
FLORIDA KEYS SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF THIS SYSTEM.

TROPICAL DEPRESSION SIXTEEN FORMED IN THE NORTHWEST
CARIBBEAN...ABOUT 280 MILES SOUTH SOUTHWEST OF KEY WEST LATE TUESDAY
MORNING. THIS TROPICAL SYSTEM MAY BECOME A MINIMAL TROPICAL STORM
TONIGHT AS IT MOVES NORTH NORTHEAST AND ACROSS CENTRAL CUBA
TONIGHT...BEFORE APPROACHING THE UPPER KEYS WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON. AS
A RESULT...SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS SHOULD SLOWLY INCREASE IN
COVERAGE TONIGHT AND WEDNESDAY...BUT THE BULK OF THE STRONGEST WINDS
WILL REMAIN EAST OF THE UPPER KEYS.

It's nice to think that being as how it's almost October that hurricane season would be finished. In fact hurricane season lasts, officially all the way through November and this is the height of the season for South Florida. Welcome Tropical Depression 16 to the Florida Keys and a tropical storm warning issued by the weather people. That means we should expect strong winds and lots of rain in the next thirty six hours. I think I will take the car to work tonight...

The National Hurricane Center in Miami is currently plotting the center of the course farther east of us, but we are still going to get wind and rain. Like we haven't had enough with just the regular summer downpours.The sky has been getting darker and rain has been slashing the side of the house so I suppose we are on our way. My preparations have been minimal, amounting to getting the laundry in and moving the motorcycle and the Vespa out of the way of any wind driven rain. 35 mile per hour winds are nothing to write home about, especially if the center of the storm moves across the Bahamas and into the Atlantic. There is always a chance that these things will suddenly develop and become a serious threat to land but the mountains of the Sierra Maestra in Cuba provide a nice buffer to break the storm's strength.It's odd and rather pleasant how the active hurricane season has produced lots of storms that have all tracked either toward Bermuda or toward Mexico. That this depression is failing to follow the format precisely is rather annoying. Rain and wind. Nice if that's all we get for the next two months.