Dog Encounters

I was not pleased to be reminded that it's visitor season when I pulled up in the dog walk of the day. Each morning after work I leave home with Rusty and we take a stroll in one of several different places around the Lower Keys where I live. Rusty likes the bushes around the Old Bahia Honda checking iguana holes with his tail wagging like a flag in a stiff breeze.

The sun was having a  hard time breaking through the cloud cover but I had a good time trying to capture the curtain effect of the display. 

 Rusty was enjoying himself in his own way.

Usually the traffic that stops to admire the Old Bahia Honda Bridge pulls into a rough parking area right off the highway. A short hike along the ridge and they can snag their pictures of the crumbling bridge, get back in their cars and leave. The lower parking area, seen below, attracts a few anglers and some few adventurous types who figure the rather obscure access road.  In the summer months it's ours.

It looked like an RV lot and while I accept that some people will look for discreet ways to wild camp while visiting the expensive Keys this seemed rather over the top. A few weeks ago I wandered into the mangroves to find a full bore campsite set up where Rusty likes to hunt. I just try to ignore them and give my dig his opportunity to be a dog. 

Me with the camera and them with their impedimenta, tables chairs, stoves breakfast implements and all the detritus of a well heeled modern North American tourist spreading out in the wilderness. Then one dude appears with two leaping snarling pit bulls on short leashes. "Leash your dog!" he called. Why? I wondered as Rusty came and sat beside me as I called to him. What a well behaved dog the woman I subsequently discovered was his wife said to me as she looked at Rusty, leash-free sitting beside me watching the pit bulls gone wild.  

He came over later and talked about his dogs newly rescued and predictably not trained after a life spent barking hopelessly in a back yard. He was eager to talk so I listened to his story of making enough money to retire by working out an oilfield gizmo that made him a millionaire he said from royalties. His plans encompassed travels in their truck camper across the US with the dogs and his wife and eventually a run south so we talked about dogs and travel. He looked to be about 40, thin and white for he wore no shirt and his tattooed skin was white like alabaster in the Florida sun.

He was planning a visit to a pit bull rescue in New Orleans that I had, oddly enough, heard about. Trapped in a motel room one night I had come across a TV show featuring dog rescues by Villalobos Rescue Center where they help people out of prison rehab through dog love. It was actually cool enough I remembered it. His problem was one of his dogs wasn't adapting to a  decent life on the road and he was afraid he might need to find her a  settled home. He was working hard to repair the rescued dogs and I liked him for that. Me the middle class nerd and he the skinny meth addict who actually wasn't and had his life better organized than I did. Books and covers came to mind.

I wished Rusty could have played with the dogs but he burned off enough energy anyway he took a rawhide and settled on the deck to reflect on his morning's exercise. I did the same. 

It will be interesting I hope when we take to the back roads in a van in a few years. I see glimmers of interesting lives being lived between the RV parks and interstates.

Snowbirds

We have been lucky, cold weather Up North came late this winter and the flocks of people coming south to escape it stayed away, mostly, until now. 

It's no easy thing to explain why temporary residents grate the nerves so much but they do and they do a great job of being annoying. I think about how that happens every year at about this time and the answers never materialize very clearly. The relationship between the working residents and the part timers is mostly defined by the fact that there is no relationship. 

I have a couple of examples that I cam across yesterday. One was my morning walk with Rusty. I went out into the mangroves before seen o'clock when there is no one around, as I like it, and found a viewing spot that I visit about once a week or so. I try to give Rusty as much variety in his walks as I would like myself if I were in his place. Anyway I came to the end of the trail overlooking the water and I found an old garden chair sitting in front of a couple of burned logs in a pile of ashes. I liked to see that not because I am a rebel but because one of my neighbors is. There always used to be a fire ring here but after a snowbird complained to the county this sign went up banning such outrgaeous practices:

That's the sort of behavior that gets my goat. Why do you have to complain? People enjoy their fires while looking at the stars and drinking beer and some killjoy comes along and decides they wouldn't allow this "at home" so banned it will be here too. 

In a similar vein Rusty and I were out walking yesterday afternoon, me looking for opportunity with my camera and him with his nose. I came around a corner and met two snowbirds, she on a bicycle and he on foot carrying a massive stick. I overheard her muttering something about a leash. "I thought he was a wild dog," she said looking at me severely. I wanted to reply, do you suppose they have a wild dog grooming parlor out here you dimwit? but I figure she couldn't recognize the difference between a fearful cowering stray and a confident cheerful dog minding his own business. I did say You're not Up North, relax and enjoy the Keys. Rusty paid them no attention at all and neither did I. I assume they went back to their trailer park and had a big discussion about free spirits and the dangers of the mangroves etc etc. And I keep asking yself why do people want to own a slice of the Keys and then kill what it is they like because it doesn't conform to their corseted view of life?

In Key West it's the same attitude. They come and suddenly the complaints in the paper are all about parking and noise and trash and on and on and on. I've lived here a long time and I am happy to call a couple of Conchs my friends with several more acquaintances. One reason I like living here is because I feel at home. Like any home I'd like to see things improve, recycling, pedestrian zones, bicycle paths and stuff like that and they'd get my vote if anyone asked. But I do not want homogenization or the continuous shoving into exile of the marginalized, the artists and outcasts who are being replaced by these noisome gentrifiers who lack taste good manners or an appreciation of the outré.

I am feeling touchy about this I suppose as a friend has left town for a few years to see what's going on out there as she starts her retirement. She has every intention of returning to her rented home in a few years but it feels as though a connection has been cut. Another friend got back after a  six month all expenses paid Grand Tour of Europe with a man who landed in Key West built a home and plucked her rather arrognatly from her circle of friends and reserved her for himself. I went to inner a couple fo times with him and attended a party at his house and found him to be distant and clearly bored by us little people and I wrote him off. As did everyone else I knew. He exemplifies the qualities that I deplore in people who want to live among Bohemians but demand the free spirits grow up and knuckle down.

The snowbirds get upset saying they bring money to Key West which is undoubtedly true but when your contribution to the party is cash everyone knows it doesn't come without strings and the people I like in Key West aren't the people who doff their caps and are felxible enough to assume a subservient attitude. For my part I wouldn't mind at all if we all had to rely on purely tourist income, and could kiss the part time residents good bye. When we got to plays my wife and I joke that we are the token working class in the audience, the ones without a trust fund given seats to prove how generous the one percent are. Generally we are also the youngest member of the audience!

Also yesterday I was in an incident that reminded me not everyone lives by the code of the temporary resident. I got cut off on Flagler Avenue by a car that sped alongside me froma  traffic light and cut into my lane before turning right. I held up my hands off the handlebars palms up in a "WTF?" gesture and the driver gave me the middle finger back. Screw it I said this person needs aocnversation. He stopped half way up the first block of 12th Street and I pulled alongside. What was hat for I said. You had plenty of room to pull in behind me to make the turn. He stared at me, a young beared man a mirror image of me in my twenties. You're an ashole I said. He looked anooyed and then said I'm sorry it was tupoid but don't call em an asshole. I said, okay you did an asshole thing, I;ve done them too from time to time. Hey bubba he said, I'm sorry. Nor problem I said and we shook hands and went our separate ways.

I stereotyped him because he was driving his Mom's Lincoln MkZ, an old fogey car  and a brand new one too, so I was an asshole and I was already feeling peeved about those people judging me for walking Rusty in the mangroves. Instead he was, as I usually find, a nice young Conch man ready to acknowledge his fault and not make a big deal out of it. Which leaves me hoping that some day soon I can find some sign of tolerance and easy going appreciation for what we have in these islands. And in that spirit I think I have to take my own advice and shut up and enjoy. 

The Edges Of The Cemetery

Its hard to argue with the prohibition on dogs in the cemetery considering how inconsiderate too many dog owners are with their animals, however its a prohibition that does keep me out.

Which is a shame because the cemetery is an extraordinary repository of Key West history and it is filled with some very interesting tombs. They have to be above ground as the water table is quite high and does not permit in-ground burials. Consequently there are all manner of tombs in plain sight much more like a European cemetery than anything found in the US outside Louisiana.  

The cemetery these days finds itself in the middle of the city of Key West though it was not planned that way. In the 19th century a major storm dug up the coffins buried on the south shore of the island (and it was an actual island in those days, not a glorified peninsula as it is today) so the residents felt obliged to move the cemetery to a more secure inland location.

The spot they chose may seem eccentric today but at the time this area of Key West was open grazing land for farming, mostly dairy cows. Truman Avenue a block south of the cemetery was called Division as it separated the city from the open land.

Then as the city grew and expanded it gradually came to surround the cemetery that use to lie on the edge of the city.

It's a struggle to keep the place tidy and organized as the burial marks are well worn. They put up a solid fence around it but people still occasionally climb it at night to wander the cemetery which is a shame because as you can see it is still very much in use and family members come here frequently. LIke dogs, those vandals and thoughtless trespassers looking for a cheap thrill need to be kept out because not all know how to behave.

From 2013 LINK

Boca Chica Bay

Monroe County is slowly working to replace anchors with permanent moorings along the Keys. The idea is to imitate the City of Key West and the City of Marathon who both have implemented mooring fields in an effort to regulate this last form of cheap housing while also they say preserving water quality. 

 I'm not sure how much of the effort will go to preserving water quality in light of all the delaying tactics they used to get sewers installed in the Keys. Boaters are blamed for anchors tearing up sea grass as well a problem that never was  a problem when massive land development was carried out. Nowadays there is time enough to get annoyed by sloppy people on dirty boats cluttering up coastal waters. Not people enjoying the water underway but people living at anchor in unseaworthy boats.

You can see why people have managed to draw unwelcome attention to themselves. For anyone to describe the occupants of this hovelcraft as "boaters" or "sailors" would be bringing the terms into disrepute. These are people looking for cheap housing.

 Actually they are enjoying free housing. Which doesn't bother me as it does some taxpayers with an inflated sense of grievance. I am a proponents of living out of sight especially when you are choosing to be on the margins of respectable society so choosing to live in a junked out hovelcraft, a term coined by a sailing friend of mine, is away to bring critical attention on yourself.

 This is a sailboat that at least looks the part even if it never moves, and most don't:

This sailboat has a dinghy almost as large as the mother ship, which is an indicator of how important access to land is to the cabin dweller. S/He may never sail but they use the motor dinghy daily.

 All pretense of mobility is gone here:

 In this picture some seabirds have made a home of some wreckage, possibly a dinghy or a proeject of some sort:

 Clusters of boats form villages afloat sometimes, with solar and wind power providing the comforts of home:

Modern miniaturization has made life afloat much more like life on land. Mobile phones, satellites, microprocessors, all have contributed to he production and consumption of reliable electricity with little weight and no heat. It's amazing when you think about it.

Some boats look like the products of a depressed state of mind. It happens that boat maintenance, much reduced by the introduction of fiberglass and plastics gets away from the would-be adventurer and it ends up looking like this:

The tent-like awning on this sailboat makes raising sails a much delayed job so they never get raised. The cabin is tiny, smaller than your bathroom by far, with sitting room only so the awning provides a living room and storage area for all the junk hoarders cannot get rid of, to their own detriment.

 There is nothing terribly romantic in my mind to living cheek by jowl in a floating trailer park of decomposing boats, but it is cheap.

Land access comes by way of this launch ramp designed to give anglers access to the sea for free, built and maintained by the county:

 Garbage disposal:

 Access to Highway One at about Mile Marker 5, across from the Key Haven Shell gas station.

 The idea behind a mooring field is to bring order out of chaos. The boats would no longer anchor on their own equipment but would tie up to a ball attached by a  chain to a deeply planted permanent anchor in the sea bed. this is structured to not drag chains across the ocean floor and tear up the sea grass where fish spawn and grow to adult hood. The county would charge rent of a few hundred dollars a month and would guarantee a place to dock dinghies, dump trash and get drinking water. Plus they would supply a system probably mobile on a boat to suck up toilet tanks and dump the crap safely ashore properly instead of into the sea. And thta might be an extra charge of say 10 or 15 bucks a visit, maybe 50 bucks a month.

All of which outrages the guardians of freedom on their hovel craft. Actually it gives them a permanent future in an uncertain world as they gain respectability by being attached to a county mooring. But short-sightedness is a national characteristic these days.In the picture below you can see a trim seaworthy cabin cruiser riding to a Navy mooring just off the Boca Chica Marina at the Naval Air Station.

 The Navy offers inexpensive access to the recreational marina to serving military and veterans and by all accounts its a good deal:

This sailboat a Gemini 105 identical down to the solar panel, to the boat my wife dogs and I sailed to Key West from San Francisco. So seeing it bobbing at a mooring reminds me of good times afloat over those two years as well as lots of sailing on San Francisco Bay:

 The Boca Chica Marina, with docks and moorings:

I was riding home from Key West and parking the Bonneville out of the traffic lane made it easy to stroll back to the bridge to take a few photographs, so I took one of the bike as well. It helps me to not miss being on the water on days when nostalgia overcomes common sense. 

A Wooden Bridge

The solstice means it's quite dark until close to seven in the morning. I get home at 6;30 change out of my uniform after my fulsome greeting by Rusty, then we get in the car and rive to a different location each day for a walk. I have found variety fuels a dog's imagination as much as it does a human's though I do tend to choose longer walks for days when I feel fresher after a night spent taking 911 calls. Some mornings I am too frazzled for much.

The plan this morning was a quick walk at the end of Niles Road on north Summerland Key. I turned north opposite the Mobil gas station and drove to the end of the pavement. I noticed the tide was extremely low and I got an idea. We arrived at the old wooden bridge to nowhere and before Rusty knew what I was doing I swept all sixty pounds of him into my arms and put him on the bridge. He liked that, as he has a lively curiosity.

Years ago Cheyenne and I came out here but she wasn't going on the bridge as it was beyond even me to lift her 100 pounds over my head...I did walk the bridge the last time in 2008 the year before I got Cheyenne so I knew what was at the other end of it (nothing).

Nowadays there is a massive ladder attached to the end of the bridge where in the old days I scrambled up using steel spikes hammered into the pilings by somebody for that purpose. You can still see them sticking out of the wood.

From the bridge the view was quite lovely at dawn and the gnats and no-see-ums hadn't found me- yet.

Some fisherman left some reeking bait in a bag on the bridge. Rusty was grateful even if I wasn't.

It was a hefty construction apparently designed to carry vehicles. The bridge looks very similar to the bridges I have seen in old pictures connecting the various Keys before the single unified road was built. I took this picture of a bridge near Key West from the book Charlotte's Story.

I was kicking myself for leaving behind my big camera,m the one with the telephoto lense but as usual my iPhone 6 acquitted itself remarkably well all things considered.

The northern end of the bridge does not present an implacable cliff figuring I guess that if you got this far you might as well have an easy step off into the mangroves.

However the trail is nothing but a small line between cleared bushes, more or less muddy with no sign of any construction of any kind. It's as though someone thought about developing this small island and built a massive bridge before plans fell through. I timed it as a 15 minute stroll to a point where the trail got more muddy than it was worth struggling to walk on and we turned back. It seems some people land near here by boat and have built a fire pit now overlooked by a rather severe sign:

The blue dot marks the spot as screen- shot on my iPhone map:

At the bottom of the picture you can see the asphalt parking area at the end of Niles Road and the trail to the bridge, the straight gray line. The island is utterly devoid of traces of development. Which suited Rusty.

Oddly enough there was a solar shower hanging in a bush which was also decorated with several shampoo bottles perched in the branches. At first glance it seems idyllic but there again you weren't walking in a swarm of no-see-ums which landed on the tiniest piece of bare flesh not exactly sprayed with repellent.  I swallowed them by the mouthful when I breathed. It was obnoxious walking with my head in my own private cloud of hovering gnats. To strip naked to wash seemed like torture of the worst kind.

The only problem remaining was the descent back to Summerland Key by my sixty pound Carolina Dog who, when he realized he had to throw himself into my arms got rather restless. I stood in the shallow water and reached up for him while making soothing noises. He allowed himself to be caught when all other options were clearly not going to work. I carried him safely to the dry land and the walk was about done.

It was a memorable morning one way and another.

He forgave me for manhandling him.