Playing In The Mangroves

I took Rusty out and it was cloudy. I have been suffering a  series of insufferable calls at work, the entitled and the irritated and the parking averse and the angry, the neighbors who can't get along and it's all grist for my employment mill. Thank any god you care to mention they can't manage their lives as they give me job security. But after I have finished with my employment for the day I take the dog out and he plays with his nose and I play with my camera. Equanimity is restored.

Winter in Key West is the time of year when too many people cram themselves into a very small space and try to get along. As a social experiment its fascinating; as a formula for daily living its an absolute disaster. Key West isn't a high crime neighborhood but it is a high irritation city. Take 23,000 people and superimpose 2.5 million visitors and make sure most of them show up in the winter months and you have a recipe for lots of complaints. 

If I had to live and work in a  town with daily shootings and murders and armed robberies it would be bad enough but to be a dispatcher is such a community would drive me to drink.  Its not that Key West has no crime at all of course but the bits that stress you out tend to come reasonably spaced out so IU can walk Rusty take a few pictures and find my equanimity before the next round of misplaced anger juggles my mental balance.

In a world filled with temporary work and no benefits I feel acutely my good fortune and some days the work is very good indeed when people get help and I play a small part in that process. But some days I just want to be out here away from them all listening to the breeze and feeling the heat penetrate my bones. I feel alive in the fresh air be it ever so humid.

I have no idea where the graffiti come from but I get the feeling that maybe the author feels similar to myself, no doubt for different reasons and instead of taking pictures leaves a visible mark. 

I saw a cobweb and spent a happy few minutes fiddling with my camera, in this case a Panasonic LX100 pocket camera if you are interested.  The white line is a single cobweb strand that defied my attempts at focus for long enough that I got determined to catch it.

Then I got ambition and found I was able to manually focus on a whole lot more. And now here you are looking at genuine Florida cobwebs. That doesn't happen every day (thank goodness).

It was good for me though to relax looking for shapes and shades and patterns in the wilderness.

A bunch of old cement pipes brilliantly re-purposed into a  paintball field. 

And an artistic canvas.

What a great place.

Photographing ants is even harder than cobwebs. Be glad I gave up in a  hurry.

There's a dog out there:

It could be a lot worse than hanging with Rusty on a gray day off.

Food To Go

The job of answering emergency calls is particularly weird because most people know very little about it.  Aside from not knowing  there are 911 centers in every community across the US (and territories) they are also not connected in any way and each one operates independent of the others. In Key West we are attached directly to the police department with an office at the top of the building, but many dispatch centers serve more than one agency and operate independently of the physical locations they for whom they take calls.

I have met dispatchers from other agencies at conferences and training sessions and I have also read articles and books and a few things stand out. One being we all seem to be obsessed with ordering food. I mostly take lunch to work with me and I keep oatmeal and tea supplies in my locker for breakfast as I work from six in the morning till six at night. But my colleagues can end up positively obsessing about the food they order and this I have learned is common in most dispatch centers.

I like Miami Grill (above) which is close to the police station and the inexpensive food is served quickly and never have I had a bad salad there. Locals love this place but my fellow dispatchers have their own favorites frequently more exotic than this! Grain and Berry is an oatmeal and fruit place in Overseas Market which I also enjoy.

I stop by there after the gym occasionally or meet my wife there to get a bowl of granola and spirulina and fruit and very good it is too, which may surprise you. My boss at work likes it too but otherwise I never see a dispatcher order from here which is odd. Italian food, Asian food and fried food abounds which may be surprising as we spend a lot of time sitting down.  

I did get Chinese food from my favorite, Tong's Garden on my way to the airport to pick up my wife after her Arizona road trip at Christmas. China Garden and Tong's have devoted followers in each camp. Dispatchers will stick to their preferences so we might get more than one delivery...

The Reader's Digest put out a list of 911 quirks which I happened across and I was surprised they didn't mention what foodies lurk in the hearts of 911 dispatch centers:  911 SECRETS. I disagree with some of the advice personally. If you are infirm keep your cell phone round your neck not an alarm device. That just delays the response and it's much better to call 911 direct so we can get details from you the patient. Besides 911 costs you nothing unlike the alarm companies. Also don't freak out of you accidentally dial 911, as we are used to mistakes. It's the drunks who get mad at us and dial repeatedly in a  rage wrecking our ability to take calls are the ones who get arrested.

And bring food. Good food and lots of it when  you come visiting. Chinese or otherwise...

Sometimes I miss nights in dispatch, the silence of the empty building and the three of us sitting around pondering the big questions in life, which we don't have so much time to do during the day with all the coming and going. 

"So..."
"What shall we  order..?"  And the Big One:
"Do they deliver?"

Links:

Tong's Garden 

Miami Grill

Grain and Berry

West Summerland Key

The recent cold front is lingering a little bit bringing night time lows in the mid 60's and crisp cool winds under empty blue skies. It is perfectly lovely and the reason why northerners want to own million dollar wooden tents loosely described as "houses" crammed into the narrow streets of Key West. No parking, no offsets, no services, no snow.

This was the scene when I arrived at West Summerland Key and unloaded one anxious dog. Rusty was ready to explore even though he's been here often he loves sticking his snout in the bushes and rolling in the grass. I come here often because I enjoy the raised views from the only hilltop in the Lower Keys and also because I can spend happy time trying to find different angles and views to photograph.

Some people, more up-to-date than I, call this place Scout Key, so named for the scout camps that flourished up the highway prior to the devastating visit of Hurricane Irma. West Summerland Key is a name that appeals to me owing to its unknown origin and lack of symmetry. The island known as Summerland Key, home to a post office and zip code, lies 10 miles to the south on Highway One,  which puts this island east of the main Summerland Key . Why this island was designated as "West Summerland" no one knows and the incongruity of it being muddled with the real Summerland Key also labeled as west of  it pushed geographers and perhaps postal officials as well to cast around for a new name. Scout Key fit the spot and the state department of transportation made it official with a little sign. Which I ignore when I arrive on West Summerland Key..

Whatever the name it remains the same lump of rock raised artificially by Henry Flagler's engineers to enable trains to climb to the Old Bahia Honda Bridge in 1912. And that elevation gives people like me pleasure as I have an actual hill to stand atop of and enjoy. The dead trees left by Irma were much prettier before September 2017 but in their starkness they also provide grist for my photographic mill.

By the way you may not know that none of these islands were named before the railroad arrived. The ones that had people on them, two or three at most, had names but all the rest were mapped and named when the rails arrived. Marathon was so called because it was a marathon job to complete the track laying to the Knights Key ferry connection to Big Pine before the big bridge was built. The other islands like Ohio and Missouri got their names from the homesick railroad navvies working on the eighth wonder of the world.

Lake Surprise south of Homestead got it's name because they didn't have aerial surveying or satellite views in 1905. They say Cudjoe Key where I live, pronounced the Anglo way - "Kud  Joe" - was named possibly for a runaway slave who pioneered there or because the word is a corruption of something else or because no one knows.  Ramrod Key was named for a British ship that sank on the reef south of what was formerly known as Roberts Island.

This strange and oddly attractive bush looked half dead but was apparently going through some sort of molting process.  Shadows and light all jumbled up in the anonymous bush.

This damaged area under the bridge is coming back. I climbed the hill for the first time in months to see what they were doing and they are doing a nice job. All those sandbags are going back to cover what the hurricane uncovered.

Looking west at the setting sun, there used to be a pump house near the beach, built in World War Two to help push fresh water to Key West Navy bases from Miami. Irma put paid to the structure which had been empty for years and now it's become a pile of photogenic rubble, as you shall see a few paragraphs further down. Keep scrolling!

I told you he was excited to explore:

The old bridge is being preserved at the other end where the state park at Bahia Honda keeps it serviceable for use as an observation platform. 

This end is crumbling.

And the crumble seems to be happening quite fast:

They call it Bahia Honda because it is, as the Spanish name makes clear, a Deep Bay. That was why they had to build an elaborate railway bridge to cross the bay in 1912.  Indeed it was in some respects a more complicated engineering feat than the Seven Mile Bridge which was just a matter of plodding along dropping cement into casements for seven miles. Here they had to figure out to go dozens of feet deep into the bay. The construction of the highway bridges was compared to the contemporary Panama Canal for engineering difficulty and strokes of brilliance in getting the respective jobs done.

Irma tore out these cement steps, below, leading down to sea level and very useful they were to me on my walks:

I take their loss, along with the destruction of the trees as a personal affront.

Here at last are the remains of the pump house:

The old water pipe was replaced in 1982 with the opening of the new main road to Key West which also carries the larger diameter water pipe alongside. Greenery and shrubbery in Key West was encouraged by the arrival of a secure flow of water. Prior to 1942 the city survived on rainwater cisterns and growing ornamental attractive trees and shrubs was not practical:

Lime stone rubble. Picturesque while horrid to walk on.

I met a  family with not much English who found Rusty delightful and he returned the compliment. He is very clear whether he likes someone or not. In the event he doesn't get a good hit he circles away giving them a wide berth so I follow his example and give certain people we encounter a wide berth.

It was an event filled and enjoyable end to a  sunny winter day was our West Summerland walk:

I see cars pull up in the rough parking lot alongside the highway. They stop for a moment and most keep going while a few step out and snap a couple of pictures and the hardiest of them totter down to the beach to do some combing. Florida is a subtle state lacking as it does mountains and sweeping vistas and other obvious points of beauty. 

I find if you take the time to look closely you will see things worth looking at. I plan in 2020 to keep on walking the mangroves, as well as downtown Key West while taking my dog and my camera with me. I shall report back from the edge of this experience.

I hope in a  few years when I take my leave of absence from the Keys and travel for a while, someone else will take pictures so I can look from afar and see how the place is doing. I don't find the over saturated sunsets selfies and palm trees populating Instagram's Key West page fulfill my needs.

I like this place.

I hope these pictures express some part of that.