From the October of 2008 this essay I am re-posting today thanks to my inability to access the Internet this past week. AT&T is forcing me to look back at three year's of posts, which isn't a completely bad thing I suppose. Frustrating but not bad.
I have taken quite a fancy to the wide open spaces of Big Torch Key lately, and I recently had a couple of not too rare encounters with local residents near the long empty road that runs across the mangrove swamps of the island. I was actually riding my bike:
First up I spotted a black lump on the road up ahead. I stopped and picked him/her up and set the tortoise in a sunny patch well off the asphalt. I have no doubt it will be back tomorrow to warm it's entrails in the road whereupon some unfeeling car will squash it.
I did my best for it.
I have taken quite a fancy to the wide open spaces of Big Torch Key lately, and I recently had a couple of not too rare encounters with local residents near the long empty road that runs across the mangrove swamps of the island. I was actually riding my bike:First up I spotted a black lump on the road up ahead. I stopped and picked him/her up and set the tortoise in a sunny patch well off the asphalt. I have no doubt it will be back tomorrow to warm it's entrails in the road whereupon some unfeeling car will squash it.I did my best for it.It's surprising to me sometimes how isolated one can feel in these relatively small islands. Big Torch is really quite large by local standards as the road is eight miles long which makes for a nice workout on a bicycle on a sunny breezy day. When I paused to take in the scenery my ears were filled with only the rushing sound of the wind. I got that same feeling of isolation in my frequent trips to the desert or once when I was in the grass plains of the Oklahoma panhandle. I used to be surprised I could find places in the Keys where I could experience that sense of insignificance. Some people like to live in the middle of it:
There are indeed a few people living out here, a clump of homes straddles Dorn Road and there are a few more houses strung out along the rest of the island but mostly it's blue skies, white clouds and green mangroves. And the occasional osprey:
I spotted it swooping over the mangroves and snapped a hasty picture, it was then I saw the nest atop a telephone pole. Ospreys are quite remarkable birds, predators of the highest order and yet I learned about these birds in a marine biology class.
At first I thought the raptor had a fish in it's talons as it landed back at home base, instead after watching a few minutes it became apparent it was still working on rebuilding the nest. Ospreys keep several nests they use year after year and they like them up high. Utilities sometimes build platforms on poles to attract the ospreys away from electrical poles in use by humans, but their elaborate nests are unmistakable:
Ospreys like to eat fish and they can often be seen circling over the waters alongside the highway. When they spot their prey they fold up and dive bomb the water, feet first. The idea is for the bird to grab it's prey with it's talons and haul the thing back to the nest. 
My marine biology instructor was a sober man not given to joking and managed to make an interesting subject pretty dull. He did however tell a story which I have to judge to be true because of the nature of the man. He said a fish had been found with a pair of osprey feet stuck in it's back. The speculation was that the bird had dive bombed it's prey which had turned out to be too large for it and the bird had been pulled and held underwater by the fish, until it drowned (the bird, not the fish). 
Ospreys I believe mate for life and share nesting duties. They are incredible birds, graceful in flight and are gifted with a slightly bizarre call rather like a school boy with an off key whistle ( if my childhood is anything to go by). I like watching them fly and I am no birder:
My closest encounter with an osprey took me a bit by surprise. I was riding north on Highway One and had just crested the rise on the overpass at Boca Chica when an osprey carrying a torpedo in it's claws flew past my face just ten feet over my head. The fish probably was none too happy with it's bird's eye view of the world but that encounter took my breath away. I quite like herons too:
I don't even mind the fake ones they are selling at Bayshore Nursery on Ramrod Key, though I don't think one of these bobbers will ever grace my yard, thanks:
It was a good ride even though I didn't reach the end of the road. There is something very refreshing about the long stretches of open road, and pedalling them makes them all the more relaxing it turns out:
Good exercises of course but not better than the Bonneville. That, never.
There are indeed a few people living out here, a clump of homes straddles Dorn Road and there are a few more houses strung out along the rest of the island but mostly it's blue skies, white clouds and green mangroves. And the occasional osprey:I spotted it swooping over the mangroves and snapped a hasty picture, it was then I saw the nest atop a telephone pole. Ospreys are quite remarkable birds, predators of the highest order and yet I learned about these birds in a marine biology class.At first I thought the raptor had a fish in it's talons as it landed back at home base, instead after watching a few minutes it became apparent it was still working on rebuilding the nest. Ospreys keep several nests they use year after year and they like them up high. Utilities sometimes build platforms on poles to attract the ospreys away from electrical poles in use by humans, but their elaborate nests are unmistakable:Ospreys like to eat fish and they can often be seen circling over the waters alongside the highway. When they spot their prey they fold up and dive bomb the water, feet first. The idea is for the bird to grab it's prey with it's talons and haul the thing back to the nest. My marine biology instructor was a sober man not given to joking and managed to make an interesting subject pretty dull. He did however tell a story which I have to judge to be true because of the nature of the man. He said a fish had been found with a pair of osprey feet stuck in it's back. The speculation was that the bird had dive bombed it's prey which had turned out to be too large for it and the bird had been pulled and held underwater by the fish, until it drowned (the bird, not the fish). Ospreys I believe mate for life and share nesting duties. They are incredible birds, graceful in flight and are gifted with a slightly bizarre call rather like a school boy with an off key whistle ( if my childhood is anything to go by). I like watching them fly and I am no birder:My closest encounter with an osprey took me a bit by surprise. I was riding north on Highway One and had just crested the rise on the overpass at Boca Chica when an osprey carrying a torpedo in it's claws flew past my face just ten feet over my head. The fish probably was none too happy with it's bird's eye view of the world but that encounter took my breath away. I quite like herons too:I don't even mind the fake ones they are selling at Bayshore Nursery on Ramrod Key, though I don't think one of these bobbers will ever grace my yard, thanks:It was a good ride even though I didn't reach the end of the road. There is something very refreshing about the long stretches of open road, and pedalling them makes them all the more relaxing it turns out:Good exercises of course but not better than the Bonneville. That, never.
It would be too cool to keep this, and the old seven mile bridge, open to slow, one way, tourist traffic with lots of parking and viewing spaces, but Florida is not a forward looking state, so the old structures are left to rot and they are rotting very very slowly, a testament to their builders' dedication. Everything is scary and dangerous to the State.
So here's the thing: it's 1929 and you are an unfortunately named land speculator who wants to make a killing in those booms years. You've found a delightfully uninhabited island in the Florida Keys, connected by rail and a rickety roadway to Key West some 13 miles to the south, and you want to develop the hell out of it. There's one problem; it's a mosquito infested swamp.
Because you're smart and an innovator you know exactly what the solution is to this pesky problem: bats! That's right, Richter Clyde Perky figured that if he built a bat tower in the middle of Sugarloaf Key the flying mammals would eat up the mosquitoes freeing his land for development and profit.
A dude in Texas was selling plans for what he called a Hygiostatic Bat Roost, and Perky built the thing fully expecting bats to love his new home for them. Well, I never figured bats for ungrateful beasts but history says they never took to Dr Campbell's Bat Roost, and no sooner did Perky pop them in their slots than they flew away never to return:
It is my habit to bring guests to this tower, which is a somewhat well known landmark among local people who pay attention to this sort of thing. It is one of three surviving Campbell Bat Roosts, and the other two are found in Texas so this pile of wood is actually quite rare. Originally there were fourteen around the world but the others have faded away. So here we have our splendid oddity,
gently crumbling in the heat and wet of Florida's climate.I have used the bat tower as a back drop in several of my photos but I decided that perhaps it was time to devote a few pictures to it before the thing crumbles away completely:
The tower is of course irresistible to graffiti artists who stop by, as this area is a hang out for youngsters, but of restorers or supporters of this historical structure there are no signs: 
While I was taking my pictures a walking jogger arrived and made a circuit. We talked momentarily about the tower and it's chances of survival, especially with hurricane season upon us once again. I was glad to be taking the time to snap the pictures. He hobbled off, a martyr to his back problems he said, as I bent back to get some angled pictures of the tower:
If you look at a map the bat tower is located in a place some geographers call Perky as though there were a town here, which there isn't. Old man Perky had hoped to be immortalised with a town named after him, but all there are is mosquitoes, a bat tower, a few homes near the airstrip and a bunch of trash:
And to top off this slightly bizarre story there is the even more bizarre fact that there are no signs to this monument to optimism and unbridled development. Come to think of it I suppose we should be grateful to the mosquitoes for thwarting Perky's plans for sprawling suburbs around here. Yet you'd think there would be one measly little sign on the Highway marking this well known tower. Not a bit of it.
No one in authority seems to care much about the Bat Tower, so if you want to find this sylvan spot turn off Highway One beyond the Sugarloaf Lodge as you drive towards Key West. Turn north at the first roadway past the lodge, at the sign to the airport, which is an airstrip nearby. The Bat Tower is unmarked, unloved and unheralded, noted less even than a 2700 foot landing strip of no great account. Typical of the Florida Keys. 
Free School Lane is not such a weird a name for an alley in a city that boasts innumerable little paths and tracks all over town, Nassau, Love, 
Things are growing, the collection of parrots is extremely loud in their cages, the sunlight is still quite dappled on the huge tree trunks and the enormous dinner plates of green leaves.
Free School Lane lies off 
Free School Lane is marked on the cement street light post, halfway between 
And there is ample parking...designated for motorcycles and scooters, 
The Secret Garden is a 
What strikes me about places like this is, aside from the care lavished on the plants that I, a failed botanist with a memory like a sieve, could not hope to name, is how much I value these small corners of extravagant exuberance.
Living in the Keys I take no space for granted, I cannot allow myself to overlook any object of interest.Not only is there too little land to do that, everything in a market as overpriced as this, is by its very nature transient. 
A guesthouse next door to the garden, a modest white wood home was for sale in the paper for one point three million dollars on my visit to the garden in March of this year, when I originally published this essay.
Nancy Forrester is growing older like the rest of us; how long will it last, this privilege of walking these downtown paths surrounded by greenery and nothing else? Each visit is, in addition to refreshment, a small statement of defiance against the forces of change, of "improvement," of destruction in the name of maximum return on investment.
