The Painted Quarry

I look back over decades spent walking the mangroves and I find it astonishing I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I have met people on the trails. This thought came to me last night when a strange woman waved at me from her bicycle. You looked puzzled when i waved at you my neighbor said to me later when I was at home. I had dutifully waved back at the brightly dressed woman on a blue bicycle with no clue it was Paula. Silly me.

Then up the trail I was wandering looking at dead white buttonwood trunks when a flash of artificial white illuminated the trail. A man's shirt I thought to myself, the gender of the occupant given away perhaps by the size of the cloth through the bushes, accompanied by a yellow dot - a dog apparently. I looked back from my buttonwood exploration and no one was anywhere to be seen. The sight of Rusty and I convinced another walker that the trail was reserved for my pleasure. Good man, leave me alone. I don't know what the world is coming to when winter visitors think they can explore my trails at will. 

Clearly, in case my taste for irony escapes you these trails aren't mine at all and I don't drag trash out here to burn it. Nor do I spray paint abandoned cement pipes, nor do I stage them as a secluded paintball field but I do enjoy visiting from time to time. There is a sensation of abandonment out here, all these signs of chaos and urban guerillas chasing around the cement yet when Rusty and I come out to listen to the wind we are alone with the merest hint of traffic on Highway One a mile away across the mud and mangroves.

I don't really see the point of dragging spray cans out here to inscribe these big cement tubes in the middle of nowhere but I suppose art must have it's outlet, even if the art in question is nihilist and of dubious originality.

Rusty and i walk, he sniffs and I make pictures and leave no trace. I once did meet a bunch of all terrain vehicles out here, mud warriors trying to pretend they are in some vast expansive woodland filled with gnarly trails and then they cross paths with an old man in Crocs and a dog who watches them from the cover of mangroves they could never hope to penetrate. A wave and they were gone. Never seen again.

Last spring I saw a pick up truck parked at the entrance to the trail and indeed later I found his camp, clearly visible from the trail and he left behind a mess of pallets, household trash, bedding and the like. It was not a good time to be living in the mangroves with much rain and mosquitoes and I don't doubt he was was not a happy human playing at boy scouts but he should have had the common sense to clean up. Trash engenders ill feeling.

There was a time in the Keys as everywhere else, when these spaces were considered "wasted" if not dedicated to human use, so the best use was to dump crap for free among the mangroves. They didn't do things by halves and i have found old cars,  a Volkswagen bus, a school bus, numerous tires, a cement mixer and on and on. Including this old trailer with a  load of tiles of all things. Just dumped and left to rust and get covered in graffiti. 

These areas were slated for development before attitudes changed. Developers bought the swamps, advertised vacation plots for sale to northerners stuck in snow storms and in an effort to make the uninhabitable useable they tried to suppress mosquitoes. You may remember the bat tower which was destroyed on Sugarloaf by Hurricane Irma. That was a natural mosquito killer plan developed early in the 20th century to have bats eat insects except they hated the neighborhood and left.

Here we have two pictures of gambusia trenches. You will find these all over the back country in the Keys. The bad news is you can trip in them and your fat Labrador can get stuck in them (I miss Cheyenne sometimes) and they are full of mud so when you pull her out you look like the survivor of a very  gruesome disaster. The good news is the rock chewed out of the ground to make them is piled alongside in low berms and if you get three feet up you suddenly get much better views...of flat green mangroves. The idea was to fill them with gambusia fish that eat mosquito larvae and hibernate in the mud in dry season.

Grand fail. But the trenches are left  as are the berms and look what you can see if you are five foot six and suddenly elevated two extra feet. I told you the views here aren't really extraordinary if you expect the Grand Canyon or Yosemite. 

I was out walking one day a few years ago and I heard the sound of a motor purring through the bushes. Imagine my surprise when a gray Vespa 250 came bouncing round the corner. He was cheerfully negotiating the mud and rocks on his $6,000 scooter and we stopped and chatted for a second. He seemed surprised when I told him the trail didn't go anywhere and didn't change much. I rather admired his nerve; I have never gone blindly off road on my scooters in the mangroves. I really do enjoy walking!

I saw Keys Energy improving the electrical lines on the hurricane resistant cement poles. Its a bot early in the year but already this winter we've had a trickle of people coming to the police station looking for hurricane re-entry stickers...my usual response is "Do you know something I don't, any storms coming?" Being prepared is a good thing but I find that sort of level of preparedness a little unnerving. I think this year I am going to evacuate if they will let me. I never have since 2004 and I think I'd like to try it especially as I have the van. I have to confess a week in the van in the Blue Ridge sounds a lot better at my advanced age than a week in the Keys with trash everywhere and no lights. My last hurricane season I hope.

Never mind hurricanes, never mind the noisy busy world that awaits. Rusty needed to sniff and I needed to enjoy the moment.

Some parts of the back country aren't trash and some aren't even marked by the passage of people, they are just patches of color and light. As the trails should be.

Beautification

More changes are planned for the city of Key West according to the newspaper. One of them I find particularly odd but there again none of these improvements should be unexpected. This city has voted to limit cruise ships, their sizes and the number of people that can land in the city. The city has a plan to reinforce and repair and enlarge cruise ship docking facilities to the tune of $3.4 million. Which allows one to imagine that grants and so forth had been appropriated long before last year's vote. Nevertheless I find myself perplexed.  

I thought the armory on White Street was looking quite toothsome in the weak winter sunlight a few days ago so I made a couple of pictures. I like how Key West looks and I shall look forward to seeing what shade contraptions are envisioned for Mallory Square. After 190 years without them the time is come to shade the square, the place where people go to see the sun go down.

And the newspaper reports that North Roosevelt Boulevard is up for a facelift. It is not attractive while being the main entry to the city. Can't argue with that, as the Boulevard is as ugly as sin and always has been. The incredibly disruptive work that was carried out to drain the road has been equally incredibly effective and I wish some important person would stand up and thank the State for the work because North Roosevelt no longer floods. I don't suppose the work will last forever given the effects of sea level rise but for now the Boulevard is easy to drive in heavy rain. 

Meanwhile the pesky Boulevard (North Roosevelt's familiar name) looks ugly. The city wanted to remove the high maintenance coconut palms lining the seawall but residents got up in arms about that. No one wanted native palmettos or similar coconut free palms. I can hardly begin to imagine what confusion will be generated by a requests for ideas from residents for a nicer looking Boulevard.

A few years ago consultants, bless their active little hearts, suggesting cutting down South Roosevelt Boulevard along Smathers Beach to one lane with an expansive median and other visual delights. That beautification scheme went over like the proverbial lead balloon as the speed limit is useful inasmuch as slow pokes can hold 30 or 35 in one lane and gatherers of speeding tickets can speed in the other lane. I would bet more speeding tickets are handed out on South Roosevelt than any other street just because people don't realize the fastest way out of town is the Boulevard no matter how fast you take the beach road. . I drive there because I want to enjoy the view but that puts me firmly in the dithering visitor category so two lanes suits me fine and I let the fine hungry speeders try their luck..

Key West is a conundrum. This is a town with flashes of brilliance and tons of disagreements and occasional bad ideas. I am holding out for a pedestrian Duval Street with pleasant stores, places to sit, flower beds creating a lovely peaceful open space downtown. I can see in my mind's eye a downtown worth visiting, not a place for vapid shopping and drinking. Why not enjoy beautiful architecture currently wasted, perfect weather invisible in the darkened recesses of bars, why not eat outside, go to the movies in the evening and hang out to meet friends without the need to explain yourself.

I saw a camper van crossing Fleming Street and I wondered what I will come back to in a  few years? 

I have no doubt Old Town will look the same more or less. If you check Key West in the state archives you can recognize landmarks and often streets and buildings on them from a hundred years ago. It's that sense of timelessness that is at risk whenever focus groups get bogged down in suggesting change. I suppose to some extent we are all afraid of change and of making things  worse.

On the one hand you have to admire the Mayor for taking the mandate for change and running with it, on the other you have to hope for the best. She has been totally hard core with the mask mandate which riles a bunch of people up but she has stuck to her guns: masks are required.

I have a sneaking feeling eventually one might wonder how people ever got by without sun shades at Mallory Square because as we know the nature of humans is to get used to whatever requirement you set down before them.  And in one sentence I suppose that sums up the greatest irritation of the virus: if it hasn't killed or maimed you it has inconvenienced your routine and what could be worse than that? I'm reaching the point that not wearing a mask feels weird on the streets of Key West...I'm glad no one will be asking my opinion about changes to the city topography because I have no idea what to think anymore.

Key West Bight

I'm running out of steam. Easter is a few weeks away, the magical date when people leave the Keys to go North and pursue the great snow melt and the blossoming of Spring. This year I have a slight, very slight, hankering to jump in the van and go with them. Our trip last year to Michigan has undone me. I want green forests and polite traffic and fresh breezes off fresh water lakes.

I am fully aware of the winter paradox in these places I only want to visit in summer: short days heavy weather and the need for proper clothing are not the formula required to make me happy but in a couple of weeks the time changes and we get daylight saving time, which makes everything better.

Key West does odd things to people. I watched a stranger carefully mopping his boat and I was tempted to ask if he mopped the4 floor in the kitchen at home. perhaps he does, but we all know that scrubbing your boat is relaxing where scrubbing your home is a chore.

I was dogless walking the waterfront so I got to watch others enjoying Key West's more relaxed approach to walking a canine. When I lived in Santa Cruz owning a  dog was a royal pain as they aren't allowed in state parks, they aren't allowed on the main street, the Duval equivalent in Santa Cruz and so on and so forth. I hope Key West stays easygoing on that front for a while at least.

It's been two weeks since I got my second shot and my wife gets hers' next Sunday so we are allowing ourselves to contemplate the possibility of maybe eating out at some point in the not too distant future. When I saw the row of charter boats missing from the dock I wondered about other peoples' approach to keeping up with distancing. Perhaps the fresh air and sunshine will be enough. 

We are short staffed at work and likely to get shorter as summer approaches. I have given up hope of getting enough time off to take a long trip so I am hunkering down, living on memories and looking forward to a summer of swimming and sweating and learning to live a normal life again. Summers in Michigan may be normal for some people but not for me, yet.

 

Marathon

I have a couple of places I go in Marathon to accomplish tasks otherwise not easily done in Key West. My home on Cudjoe Key is split halfway between the two cities but because I work in Key West  I obviously don't see Marathon nearly as much. Which is ironic to a certain degree as the drive to Marathon is easier and swifter and much more scenic when you find yourself commuting over the Seven Mile Bridge as my wife used to prior to the pandemic.

Marathon is home to light industry similar to Stock Island the place that relieves Key West of the need to dirty it's hands with physical labor. 

I come to Marathon for stuff likes tires for my cars, oil changes, sometimes I come to walk Rusty and will shop at Publix where the crowds seem less.  Stuff like that. I like living halfway between Key West and Marathon. It used to helpful that the 24h hour (extremely expensive) vet hospital was here but now that's moved the Big Coppitt at Mile Marker 10.

That was the Golden Van getting a $65 oil change.

Rusty and I were walking waiting for the tires to be rotated as the van has reached 15,000 miles. We came across a dog sitting on a motorcycle all by itself. Like all little guys (me included) he strutted up so I let Rusty loose and they circled around for a while until they got bored with each other.

I found a trompe l'oeil mural too which i rather liked. A weird place for such elaborate artwork.

Tenacious. Not a bad attribute.

Trucks and big wheeled toys for big strapping me (like me).

I love how Marathon looks completely unlike Key West.

But here too big houses tower over the trees:

Rusty the explorer on Aviation Boulevard behind the airport. They have a luxurious airport with a fine terminal just waiting for an airline to serve the city. 

The van unobtrusive - behind Publix in a regular sized parking spot:

Back to the waterfront, my favorite picnic site at Old Bahia Honda.

Sunny Duval

I had better say this now and allow the chips to fall where they may: I am not looking forward to summer. I was on Duval Street at four o'clock the other day and, aside from the fact that vaccinated me had his mask on, it was hot enough to boil an egg on my head. I ran back to the office and stood in front of the a/c for a few minutes before resuming the arduous task of unraveling parking violations and noise complaints and relationships gone bad.81 degrees this time of year feels like 95 in September. 

I parked the car on Southard, abandoning satellite radio and air conditioning for the hot streets of Key West and decided to invigorate my work day with a  brief hike with my small camera (Lumix LX100ii) to see what marvels and unconsidered trifles may present themselves to my jaundiced eye. I saw some shadows and light but I also saw a ton of people. Duval was looking like the good old days. 

They are now telling us the end of the pandemic is in sight and even though there may be more cases in the winter when Northerners crowd together indoors we will end up living in a country where the vulnerable will be vaccinated and the anti vaxxers can take their chances. 

Right now Key West is in vacation mode. Officers are posted to get people to wear masks and of course people comply. But when the badge is a distant memory holidaymakers are less enthusiastic about covering up.

Stores require masks, along with shirts and shoes but outside its a cat and mouse game of warning-mask- walk away- take it down. I was walking and photographing

I am so used to wearing a  mask, as a sheep in government service you might say, it doesn't bother me unless my glasses fog up when I'm aiming the camera. Not everyone on Duval Street is on vacation:

A new-to-me eatery in a spot that has undergone a few transitions over the years. They have an $11 banh-mi sandwich that I might be interested in trying and they have outdoor seating too. I used to live near San Jose in California where a huge number of refugees lived after the Vietnam War, and they had some astonishing places to eat in the 1980s when Vietnamese food was largely unknown. I had my first banh-mi there and even now  that it is become a fad I still like that mix of French and Far East.

Duval Street is a tired old whore in some respects when you look at the sleazy t-shirts and tired cheap "souvenirs" and yet the architecture, the bones of this old street remains the same, the underlying beauty of the buildings and the facades is very much there if you look up. And on a hot sunny afternoon as the sun heads for the horizon I see delicious shadows and the promise of a cooler evening. The light can be quite lovely.

The cruising up and down on Duval is endless, with a stream of bicycles and scooters and I find myself surprised there aren't more accidents. Which is to say there are quite enough thank you but I feel all too often Duval is confused with Disney, and traffic here is not make believe like it is in Disney where people don't crash in the happiest place in the world. 

I don't know if the two wheeled vacationers, persons who would not be seen dead at home on work horse bicycles or scooters, take the time to look around as they ride, to ponder the history and the people who lived here all the way back to 1828. I do and it fills me with wonder. Duval Street is a story of survival.

They speed by on wheels of all sizes, not all shapes as even in this town all wheels tend to be round and obey the laws of physics.

Just off Duval I passed one of the denizens of Old Key West, and I've seen her shuffling around downtown, neat and tidy, in her own world, minding her own business, no trouble to anyone. It makes me glad she can still hang in among the new arrivals, the busy, the efficient, the wealthy. All is not lost.

Nomadland

The movie recently released on Hulu (and in those theaters that are still open) has caused a few ripples among people who live in vehicles.  Its a story of the usual reaction among people who think they know more about a subject than the people who made the film. Most of us aren't secret agents or jewel thieves so it's easier to watch an adventure film for pure entertainment than to watch a film about something you think you know.  This film is about a woman living in a van, on her term she is houseless, not homeless. Van life has hardly anything to do with this form of being a nomad. It's not going to change my life.

The story is simple enough. A woman, Fern, becomes widowed before the film begins and we see her packing up her life in a small town in Nevada after losing her job and she drives away from her storage locker to live life in her low top older white van. Its not a comfort machine but she has a toilet (vividly portrayed in use as Frances McDormand doesn't hold back) cooking facilities and a bed. The whole tone of the movie is slow paced, meditative and unhurried. Its dark outside, snowy and cold much of the time. Fern goes hither and yon, finds temporary work, makes friends and lives a low key van life. She is supposed to be standing in for older workers, many women, who have made little money earn less on social security and find a mobile life better than being on the streets. Fern has opportunities to live in a house, to return to her family, to find love with David Strathairn and she makes her choice. Van Life? Retirement? Solitude?  

For me life in the United States has been a stroke of luck, or genius on the part of my youthful self. However I have skated by with decent jobs when I wanted them, no family obligations, no expensive divorces no child support. In many respects I have lived a charmed life, assisted in no small measure by a  forward looking wife and a pension plan. For many Americans old age is no golden retirement, no happy fade to black but a struggle to maintain sanity and mental health, to maintain relationships and find a way to live with not much money. That's not van life. Swankie has cancer and a limited time to live. Saying good bye to Fern is a tough moment in the movie. (In real life she is hale and hearty and doing fine in her van). It's not van life. Its people in vans living on the edge of dissolution.

What strikes me as a bit odd is how the generalizations sweep everybody who is affected by the movie. When I decided to have a mobile retirement I found myself deluged by  Instagram pictures of youngsters living their "best life" as the cliché has it in immaculate vans and the skimpiest of bikinis as though that was my goal. I'm really not delusional. My own path is somewhere I hope between the  forced van dwellers at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (below) in Quartzite and the mad YouTubers making money off the self delusion of dreamers paying others to live their fantasies.

I am very fond of Bob Wells (pictured below in an unflattering portrait) an Alaskan who was forced into a van in great misery by an unhappy divorce and who quietly and efficiently adapted to life in a  van, hunkering in the desert and learning how to make do with a social security check by his account of $1100 a month. He has a stale website where I found him but he has moved to YouTube where he makes some $75,000 a year, by others accounting and attracts the usual band of desperate trolls and character assassins. He has loosely organized a charity designed to help equip people with simple rolling homes to get them out of homelessness and into vehicles, he has advice and encouragement for the lost souls forced into vehicle living as well as the luckier people who choose to do as he does. He makes a cameo appearance in the film and reveals his own pain and it is perhaps that couple of minutes that has galvanized van dwellers to do so much navel gazing around this movie.

My own thoughts about Nomadland center on the work of former Key West resident Barbara Ehrenreich who documented in old fashioned books the plight of the working poor in so many different guises.  To me, from my middle class unencumbered perch Nomadland speaks much more to that reality than the reality of life in a  van.