From The Archives: Marathon's Other Beach

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Coco Plum Beach

Driving north on Highway One you turn south at the last light on your way out of town, the traffic light past Key Colony Beach.At the end of a very long drive through suburbs that reminded me of mainland Florida, you reach a turn out.The drive to this beach is lined with nice landscaping, tall condos and tennis courts and lots of keep out signs. It reminded me very much of the tony homes lining Highway A1A along the beaches of Palm Beach County. Not to be outdone:The views south were as always, quite splendid. I wouldn't trade the wildest snow blizzard in the world for this view:Up the shoreline there is the official city beach that we shall get to later. For now Cheyenne and I took off up the rocky shore.We had arrived quite by chance at low tide and had lots of room to walk.A word about the name and I had to go to Wikipedia to get this next picture and some slight information about the Coco Plum. First it can be written cocoplum or CocoPlum but my spell checker prefers coco plum... Secondly it is apparently an edible fruit found growing around the Caribbean Basin and across South Florida. It is an ornamental bush and has been planted in warmer inland areas of Florida. Like me it doesn't tolerate frost. There you have it.This was whence we had come, looking back at the car and the monstrosity behind it:I was not alone.I never take for granted where I live. I know that for some people living at sea level with no hills must seem like a bore but for me, this is perfect.She doesn't seem to mind it either.
It was cold and breezy, with temperatures in the low 60s (16C) and the north wind was honking.Here on the south shore of the island, close in to the mangroves we were well protected from the breeze.I found a trail that led us through the bushes.Cheyenne was having a great time.I had my Zen moment tucked into a small beach with someone's lean to of sticks built up behind me. I felt like Robinson Crusoe.

Cheyenne came to sit next to me and for a while we passed the time in companionable silence.

A man came down the beach minding his own business when Cheyenne saw him and she sat up with a start going all Labrador with her ears alert. I don't think he was much of a dog person because he saw her eyeing him through the bushes and he promptly turned tail and fled. At last! My attack Labrador training has paid off. And she didn't even growl. We passed the fisherman on the way back. His wife had dropped him off for his first visit to this beach, and so far he was having no luck. I told him I admired him for being able to stand in the freezing waters and he gave me a sickly grin as he tossed the lure over his shoulder.Really, it does get aggravating doesn't it, seeing all that sea and sun glittering away- it's just too damned pretty.We made it back to the end of the beach in good order and I decided to cut back to the road directly through this apparently abandoned McMansion under construction.

I was lucky. Not five minutes after we strolled through, with me weaving fantasies about living in such isolated splendor, a pick up loaded with building materials pulled up in front of the No Trespassing sign. You just never know what's really going on; what may appear abandoned -isn't.

This guy came huffing by as we stepped out into the street.He was weird. He kept running down the center of the street like he was glued to the yellow line, even as cars approached he swerved only at the last minute.People and their death wishes.The City of Marathon has quite brilliantly obscured the sign to the proper public park behind the chain link fence so you can't see it as you flash by in your car. Once past you realise what you have done and have to back up to get inside the park, but it's a nice orderly spot when you do make it in.There are lots of billboards explaining the endangered status and lifestyle of assorted sea turtles:Beyond the neatly paved parking lot is the strip of sand, here looking west.Even though there were no signs saying dogs had to be on a leash I kept Cheyenne on hers just...because. Then I saw local dogs frolicking in the water, in front of the Fort Myers Beach-like cement towers.And behind me some dude was walking his pugs off leach so I let my fearsome attack Labrador go. The last I saw one of the pugs was leading it's plaintive owner a merry dance through the parking lot so he have done better to leash the brute. My obedient dog climbed in the car, ready for more Middle Keys adventures.

Thunderstorms In Blue

Sometimes my phone camera surprises me. An exposure setting left from a previous expedition produces unexpected results. I was at the Ramrod Pool with the hound early one morning, but not too early as darkness persists to beyond 6:30 these days... I love daylight savings time!... and instead I got this surreal shade of blue over everything. What the hell...thunderstorms in blue, so be it.

"Blues With a Feelin'"
(Little Walter, Paul Butterfield)

Blues with a feelin',
that's what I have today
Blues with a feelin',
that's what I have today
I'm gonna find my baby,
if it takes all night and day

What a lonesome feelin',
when your by yourself
What a lonesome feelin',
when your by yourself
When the one that you're lovin',
have gone away livin'

Courtesy of GarytheTourist.

 

Lo! What light through yonder window breaks..? Just another thunderhead ready to swallow my car.

 

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Not Qualified For Keys Living

It occurs to me I have been living a vampire life lately, a great deal of work, huge paychecks, lots of commuting by motorcycle (yay!) with my few precious daylight hours consumed by  chores of varying degrees of drearyness. That's why I have these night time pictures of Truman Avenue taken on a recent lunch break.

I met an unusual person recently while out walking my dog, unusual because she doesn't yet live here and seems entirely unsuited to be contemplating the idea. . I should have thought I was well protected by a dog that brooks no company and a motorcycle magazine held close to my face but the woman broke down my defenses. I felt obliged to be sociable as she was entirely pleasant and her dogs were cheerful souls, peeing on each other at random which neither Cheyenne nor I approved of exactly, but we are old foges. We rarely pee on each other, unless in a moment of absentmindedness as you do.

 San Diego she said, is not her cup of tea, which was a surprising statement as many people consider it to be some sort of not-too-cold nirvana, decent light air sailing, mountains deserts and culture nearby, jobs in a mild climate if you can stand cold wet winters and the pleasures of laid back Baja California at your doorstep as it were. Instead this odd traveler is trying to break a tie between Northern California, land of endless damp fog and gray skies and cool summers or Key West.

I hate mosquitoes she said, they give me welts. I don't like the heat much either she said. I stared at her, and I hope I wasn't too rude. Umm I said, trying to figure my phrasing  ahead of opening my mouth in public. We haven't seen temperatures below sixty degrees for three years I said. It'll cool off soon won't it. she said as this surreal conversation went on under the shade of a poinciana tree. Umm I said again, probably not much before November, we need at least two cold fronts to end summer.

It turns out she has a mobile job and her sister has a house in the Keys, neither of which is much of a qualification to move here but clearly she needs to look much more closely at Humboldt County or Mendocino and a lot less at the Lower Florida Keys. Her dogs would probably like it better as well. She spent much of our fifteen minute conversation pouring tepid water on her panting hounds. Cheyenne watched in disbelief. 

I think I am supposed to be the noise of encouragement to people contemplating living here. The way I see it no one takes advice anyway and if you really want to live here you will. But I won't be complicit in making up how great you will find it because you may very well not. I asked a friend why she moved to the Keys, not once but twice, the second time determined never to leave. She lives in expensive sub standard housing with weirdly painted walls, unreliable appliances,  air conditioning so feeble she, who is cold blooded, finds it insupportably inefficient. Yet she loves living in Old Town. Why? She doesn't have to drive, she likes being on the water and people are genuinely pleasant she said.  It;s different and I've never been happier among my friends.   

Actually I feel the same way on my good days.  I cherish being left alone when I need to have alone time. I like the idea that I can still against the odds, do my own thing and I enjoy living among people who don't give a fig for fashion or customary mores. It can get tedious of course because not all social mores are undesirable but you have to take the good with the bad and the good is better than the bad is bad. Drinking is a common pastime which is tedious after a while, every social function lubricated by alcohol. Bad, sometimes. But there again the drinking is generally in my experience good natured, so that's good. The problem is that for people not used to these skewed perspectives Key West can often seem insane and this is a town that refuses to re-order priorities to conform with outsiders' expectations. So on this front door of this rooming house you will find the contradictory notions that simply by entering you become a suspicious vermin subject to search and seizure on a whim of management who also cheerfully posts the "One Human Family" slogan underneath the draconian restrictions on personal liberty... Its why I love Key West, the contradictions make me smile. Other people find them crazy making.

Key West is a town that rarely rewards ambition. You need to know your place and accept that the people who run the place have no interest in you, your skills, your experience  or your enthusiasm. Much better not to need a job. However a job gives you a place in the pecking order, an entry to the nether regions of life in this small fishbowl. 

I sometimes forget how unusual is the architecture of this town in a country devoted to plasterboard malls and manufactured homes. The historic  brick structures you see Up North might be useful down here were the bricks not so expensive to import. so they used ship's timbers to build these homes. 

That  huge question about life in Key West...where do the locals eat? How about Dennys? Not romantic enough? Perhaps but there is a peculiar lust after chain restaurants in Key West, mostly because there aren't that many of them and most people hate to drive. Plus local wages don't allow for tourist type meals out too often. 

Sometimes the lack of taste can get frustrating. Beautiful bas relief wood panels in the door are offset by a  two dollar plastic sign. Even if the house is unoccupied and dusty, surely unauthorized entry is obvious even without the ugly sign? 

Affordable housing has been on the city's agenda as long as anyone has been alive but the conundrum of how to house the worker bees that keep the city running is yet to be solved. The affordable housing stock is getting elderly.

In the bad old days some company housing was pretty decent. The lighthouse keeper's home on Whitehead Street:

 They moved the lighthouse inland as it was too vulnerable near the water and the keeper of the flame got a rather decent residence to enjoy in the middle of town. The best perk of all in this town: somewhere affordable to live.

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Ocean Moods

A commercial fisherman, identified by large registration numbers on his boat and the weird driving position at the front (the helm at the bow, landlubbers), cutting across Kemp Channel toward Summerland Key.

From left to right, the new, 1982, bridge with the white water pipe  bringing water from Homestead to Key West, then the 1912 Flagler Bridge with the tide rushing south under it.

My bicycle parked at the end of the separate bike trail on Cudjoe Key. I wish they would connect the old Flagler bridges but that would cost money. Instead they cut them in half  and close the stumps. 

Further east I took Cheyenne to the "beach" on West Summerland Key, near Bahia Honda State Park for an afternoon airing. I am not fond of gray skies and pewter seas. I like sunshine and bright colors but either way this is a good place to cloud watch or wave watch or to read while your dog sleeps. Whatever dolt with a sense of humor put this sign here in the undergrowth on a  45 degree slope deserves recognition for a fine sense of the absurd. The only reason an enterprising RVer would consider parking in this unlikely spot would be to defy the absurd sign.

Did I say beach? The proper beach with imported sand and some dead seaweed is across the channel at the State Park, famous on Bahia Honda ("deep bay."). Here on an undeveloped parking area the beach at low tide resembles an excavated quarry.

Not what tourists expect if they haven't done their homework. The Keys are built on limestone rock, once underwater, now exposed to the air corals grew in pre-history then died leaving these islands above the sea level. Mainland Florida is the sandpit. To visit the Keys for the beaches only leads to disappointment. 

 Cheyenne enjoys sitting in the grass made abundant by Biblically heavy rains this summer.

I enjoy seeing her happy on an overcast dull afternoon. Exciting lives we live in the Lower Florida Keys.