The Frozen North

A colleague of mine was quite taken by the title of "Beaver Moon" apparently given to the full moon in November when once upon a time beaver hunting was a popular event. The way the world moves it has taken on a  whole new and not necessarily appealing connotation. Rusty on the other hand looked mighty regal as we watched the sun come up over Mallory Square with the beaver moon fixing to set over Sunset Key.

The mention of beaver hunting put me in mind of trappers and wilderness and the call of the wild in northern places where people continue to be active even when snow is on the ground and water turns solid. Not my kind of environment. If it were my environment spending two decades earning a  pension in Key West would be rather stupid, now wouldn't it? Why live in the tropics if you crave snow on the ground I say. So when my sister in law said she wanted to give us down jackets for Christmas I started over thinking as usual. A generous gesture no doubt but it did rather bring out into the open a  future that most likely will involve cold weather and the chance of frostbite and polar bears and stuff like that. 

My sister in law lives near Asheville where my wife and I have before now visited her family for Christmas, which in the northern hemisphere is that time of year when it gets cold. To my mind the best thing about living in Australia for all its robust masculinity must be that they have Christmas in mid summer. Absolutely brilliant. I meanwhile celebrate forced travel in mid winter and Asheville in December can be positively arctic. Oh they tell us, it's not usually this cold as we seek cover from horizontal sleet and streets like ice rinks. But it always is. One memorable Asheville Christmas we struggled into the house from the car parked outside and even Emma the Labrador was put off by the 12 degree night and howling wind. We stepped inside shivering. The family looked at us in puzzlement. Why were we not wearing our winter clothes they asked, as though visiting Asheville in December in short sleeves jeans and thin sweaters was the behavior expected of unaccompanied imbeciles. All we could say in our defense was this is as warm as our clothing gets.  Looks of disbelief all round: the morons from key West are back.

So when I am faced with the prospect of actually owning a proper down puffy winter jacket like they wear on ski slopes and similar abominations I find myself asking what have I let myself in for? My wife has been exploring out of the way nooks and crannies in the van to hold our not-immediately-in-use clothing which I hope will include storing the puffy down jackets most of the time. On the other hand I do have to come to grips with the fact that the pursuit of knowledge and experience means there will be days, several I dare say, of being cold and wearing socks even when I don't feel like it.

When we decided to get married my wife thought the person to tell was her older sister as their parents were both dead by then and it turned out the Asheville-lover was earning money to put her boys through university by working as a general practitioner in Fargo North Dakota. Her mild mannered and slightly vague husband had got a sound job teaching in neighboring Morehead Minnesota and they did their ten years penance living and working astride the Red River a stone's catapult from Canada, also known as The Frozen North. As nervous as I was I put up no resistance when my beloved suggested we go and break the news at Christmas that year. 

I had no idea what to expect when the airplane landed in Minnesota and even though I was then living in frigid wet coastal California my tropical heart was overwhelmed by the icicles in the air and snow banks taller than the car. It was a peculiar visit not least because the news came as no surprise and everyone worked hard to make the weirdo feel at home. Which was an uphill row to hoe considering I watched in amazement as they took the hair dryer outside for a walk on a very long extension cord the next morning and used it to defrost the car door lock. This was not normal and I wanted no part of it. I took the dog for a walk in an effort to experience the familiar in a new setting. That was a bad idea.

I ended up wading through waist deep snow walking on water that was supposed to be the Red River dividing the two states. All I saw as I struggled with a leashed husky having a great day was a field of snow between two rows of twig like saplings. A sylvan place in summer no doubt but in December (the accursed month!) it felt like the North Pole. Then we took off for a wedding in Bismarck where friends of the family were to be joined in matrimony. The drive across North Dakota was a vision of what my hell will look like in the fullness of time, as the heat and fire promised by Medieval visionaries sounds balmy compared to the plains of the Dakotas under wind driven snow. I was sure the four wheel drive Toyota van was going to stop and I was going to die like Robert Falcon Scott eleven miles from safety. 

My fiancé and I were not, thank God, part of the wedding party and we stayed behind at the hotel while they went off to do the honors. The hotel was something out of Alice in Wonderland with the central courtyard roofed over like a giant skylight above the swimming pool. The pool was surrounded - I kid you not - by AstroTurf and beach umbrellas and Dakotans behaving as though they were at the ocean's edge in July. I could not believe what I was seeing and I wandered to the windows and looked out at an arctic landscape of white lumps and deep black wet tracks cutting  through the winter Christmas card landscape. Santa Claus on a sled couldn't have surprised me after the pool party going on at the hotel beachfront downstairs.  The weird illusion of summer carried on the next morning when we stopped for gas on our way out of Bismarck. The sun was shining and the sky was blue but the temperature was minus 20 in American degrees. I volunteered to pump gas as I saw people in their shirt sleeves enjoying the sunshine. Can't be that bad I thought. My leather jacket froze to my shoulders like armor and my jeans felt like ice tubes on my legs. I couldn't breathe the air was so cold. I got back in the Toyota Siena and after I thawed out later the allure of bison in a field alongside the highway could not get me out of the car on the drive back to Morehead. I looked at them through glass and felt bad for their frozen predicament.

Our first serious cold front of the winter has lowered temperatures to 62 degrees, a subject of much mirth by real men who have sailed alone around Cape Horn with no source of onboard heat. Webb notes that temperatures in South Carolina are twenty degrees lower and he is twice as old as me and his cheerful tone dismisses me as a crank and a cold weather coward. He is correct on both counts. My idea of a winter sport is standing on Duval Street watching other people run around town in their winter underwear. This is my kind of December.

I spent my last day off enjoying a brisk sunny afternoon on the deck with a book and a cup of tea slightly chilled in the breeze but enjoying the break from summer's humidity that had persisted far too long. The end of hurricane season was celebrated in muted pandemic fashion on the last day of November and that should close one of the weirdest and most active seasons anyone can remember. I wouldn't be surprised if warm waters in the Western Caribbean don't produce a December surprise as that has happened before but I hope I can safely say I have but one more hurricane season to live through before I retire. I have spent enough time over the years sitting in the police station waiting to be wiped out, thanks.

And there's the thing of it, with no obligations and nowhere to be my wife and I are planning to follow the seasons for a while.  She is nervous about facing Alaska's notorious insect population and I am hoping for a summer heatwave in the Arctic in 2022 but we are both going to make every effort to harden up and expect temperatures to fluctuate rather more than they do in the Keys. If we don't our adventures will be crippled by cold which would be absurd. I'd like to drink a  toast one day in Patagonia to Webb Chiles, first American to sail alone around Cape Horn. I plan to do it actually in Tierra del Fuego, but in the comfort of a heated, windproof van securely anchored on terra firma.

I am a creature of nostalgia and I know I will miss bright sunny winter days and this past week is what I will look forward to returning to after the van travels are done. Things are changing here and I wonder how Key West will look in the course of the next decade. Already we have closed circuit cameras on Duval (above) and the mayor is now pushing history as a tourist draw, which would mark a change in the city's income stream compared to the last fifty years. Fewer artists and eccentrics I fear and more conformity and disapproval.

Key West will change and I too must change. I am going to embrace puffy down jackets and in a couple of weeks we are going to take off for a week and explore cool temperatures and van life for a few days in North Florida. We shall rejoice in socks,  we will learn how to heat the van, we will make full use of blankets and we will watch Rusty scoff at our trepidation and enjoy his fur coat the way it was meant to be used: in the cold. Oh brave new world, I embrace you.

Greene Street

Pardon Greene was one of four Americans who bought the island of Cayo Hueso from the Spaniard Juan Salas in 1822 for two thousand dollars. That was quite the deal as Salas got the island as a land grant from the Spanish governor of Florida for "services rendered" and he did nothing with the scrubby rock which had apparently been a native grave yard they say, hence the Spanish name "isle of bones" translated accidentally into Key West. 

I'm not sure how this place was found to be a  graveyard as the islands were uninhabited and almost all of them stayed that way until the 20th century intruded in the form of Flagler's Railroad which supplied isolated settlements and created secure communications. Anyway Juan Salas sold his island to five other men called John - Simonton, Whitehead and Fleeming (sic) who also got streets named for them. John Warner and John Mountain also bought shares but sold theirs to Pardon Greene who got his street named for him too. Warner and Mountain lost out on the street memorials though I would have loved to have a Mountain Street in Key West.

Salas was no dummy and got another John involved when  he made a conditional sale to John Strong who sold his share on to John Geddes. It sounds like a joke with Juan (John) Salas selling the island to a whole string of Johns but it is a true story. Eventually Geddes had his claim vacated by the courts and Salas gave him 500 acres of mainland Florida by way of compensation for his efforts to actually occupy the uninhabited island with carpenters and builders.

The upshot is that Greene Street is correctly spelled as Pardon was the only non-John among the first crowd of owners of this piece of paradise. Fleeming Street was altered over time and has become Fleming Street, more pleasing to the Anglo ear. I doubt there is much of note in all this to most visitors to Key West who may have a preferred bar or restaurant on Greene Street. I got a not great picture of Captain Tony's as I walked by in the winter sun.

Heading toward Sloppy Joe's one is reminded that Sloppy Joe Russell owned the Captain Tony's location when he started his immortal association with Ernest Hemingway and took himself and his bar and his locals to the new Duval Street location after he fell out with his Greene Street landlord. I think the dispute was over thirty seven dollars if I recall correctly.

Sloppy Joe's looks closed in the pandemic times we are living through but it is actually open with the one door on Duval Street for entry and the doors on Greene Street used as exits. 

The Bull across the street was open with the now usual restrictions:

General Horseplay on Caroline Street is a weirdly named bar replacing the familiar Lost Weekend. I recall with no fondness the ghastly name of "Big 'Uns" which I hated dispatching officers to in the bad old days of crowds on Duval Street before the great recession. General Horseplay seems plain weird to me but I am not a barfly. General Horseplay?

The other great myth in Key West involves the presence of wild chickens. The story goes that they came from Cuba with refugees which makes no sense to me. I can't imagine getting on a boat to brave the rough waters separating Cuba from Florida and taking your fighting rooster as a must have immigrant accessory. Besides if they only brought fighting roosters who supplied the female chickens? I suspect that in the years of Key West's decline when the Navy pulled back from Key West in the 1960s, chickens got loose and no one cared.  Looking at the Depression era art from the 1930s  you won't see chickens depicted loose on the streets, but what do I know? Myths count for more than facts.

It is a tourist town. They love chickens. 

Sloppy Joe's in action, masks off when sitting down. Not me, I walked on by masked and distanced from mask free people sitting down in a  room.  

Island Dogs on Greene Street has put tables on the sidewalk to create outdoor seating. 

Afternoon sun on Greene Street looking toward the harbor from Old City Hall:

Florida Keys

I had to go back to my preferred spot to walk Rusty wandering  the waterfront at the Old Bahia Honda Bridge. A few pictures from our wandering on a not completely cool winter morning. Nothing new to see, just some winter sunshine and clouds.

The road home passing cars parked while their owners go bridge fishing on Big Pine Key.

Key West Masked

If you like your winters warm Key West is living up to billing. There is no sign yet of cruise ships of course but the winter tourist season is in full swing, full at least in the pandemic ear we find ourselves living through.

I took a masked lunch break downtown to remind myself of the sunny small town vibe I prefer to the rather grungy grayness of the big city Up North on our recent van trip.

Sloppy Joe's, the iconic bar has instituted a one way system with the way in on Duval Street and the doors on Greene Street functioning as well marked exits.

Masks are required outdoors, as are cell phones you would think. I was enjoying the sunshine and the blue skies more than my phone screen. 

Warm enough to discard a mask to drink while walking topless no less:

The scattered family approach on Greene Street:

Eating and walking, proving anyone can multi task.

Socially distanced bars.

Paying to park ( a car I hope; not the bicycle). 

 

The Battle Of Ocean Pond

The morning after Thanksgiving dawned and I was up and about waving a camera and a dog at the world and expecting bright flamboyant Florida colors in the sky. However this was as good as it got and what started out as a test photograph ended up as the sole picture of the sky with any color other than gray. 

I stepped into the state park and followed Rusty's nose checked the scrub palmettos and pine forest in the state lands that didn't look so different to the National Forest land on the other side of the fence. A car had approached Thanksgiving evening as we sat down to our stuffing and beef dinner and the occupant said he had driven from the Olustee Monument State Park up the road. Weren't we surprised!

These palm fronds have spikes on the ends and make walking through them rather more painful than you might enjoy.

Thge trick then is to stick to the roads and trails.

Somebody with a powerful motor mower had carved a path through the pines. A local resident told us this is the site of a battle and the ground is apparently littered with human and other remains from the 1864 conflict at Olustee.

We were alone in the silent woodlands as we put the kettle on and got ready to seek our fortune in Gainesville at Trader Joe's. From the sublime to the prosaic.

The gods had figured out it was a day off for me so they obliged us with yet another sprinkle of rain.

I was untouchable, bathed in the rays of pure adoration from my very misguided dog;

We drove back to Highway 90, turned left off the dirt roads and pulled up at the Olustee Battlefield Monument. There were 5,500 Union troops coming from the east and they met up with 5,000 dug in Confederates at Olustee, near a lake still known as Ocean Pond which is the formal name for the battle that ensued in February 1864.

The Battle of Ocean Pond on 20th February happened  rather by accident and ended up being the largest Civil War conflict in Florida, hardly surprising as the peninsula was pretty much uninhabitable and key West, the largest city in the state was firmly in Union hands.

The short version is that Union troops landed in Jacksonville and the General in charge, Truman Seymour took it on himself to try to capture Tallahassee, the state capital. Had he succeeded you might have heard of him before today but the Confederates won the battle and the Federal forces contented themselves with holding Jacksonville while leaving Tallahassee alone.

The battle itself was a mess, with the Confederates dug in around Olustee Railroad station and the Federal General Seymour underestimating his opponents assuming them to be untrained militia. Instead the Confederates had regular troops who had been sent as reinforcements from Georgia and they shot up the groups of lackadaisical Union troops as they advanced piecemeal. The destruction of the Union Army had a weird footnote inasmuch as their retreat from the battlefield was covered by African American soldiers. They did their job valiantly and more than that their fighting presence on the battlefield enraged the Confederates who stopped to slaughter the wounded black soldiers and thus allowed the bulk of the Union army to escape back to Jacksonville. Weird details of history. 

Not so weird were the casualty lists: The Union army lost 1800 dead wounded and missing while the Confederates  lost about a thousand men the same way.  A pretty spot in which to die I suppose but what  a waste.

This is the other end of the road closed by the gate, "Road Closed: Gate Ahead" read the sign. Rusty wasn't interested so we inspected some trash cans instead.

Trader Joe's was empty according to my wife, the masked shopper, so she amused herself checking the aisles while Rusty slept and I read on the bed in our portable home.

My wife got this picture later when we stopped for dinner, but while we drive he prefers to be up front with us, snug between Layne's legs. He is getting used to the van, as are we, as we continue to refine our use of the vehicle and the accessories we learn to live with. We learned form boat living that adapting to the space and the systems would take time and we are finding it to be so. I have no idea how people step out of their homes into a tiny space, with no prior experience, and don't go mad adapting as they learn on the road..

People who don't know me very well think I am impulsive but I am the least impetuous person om the planet. What looks like a wild unplanned burr under the saddle is a carefully thought out idea gradually pout into practice. During the long drive home my wife and I reminisced about our first foray into the world of RVs looking at vehicles at the Tampa show in 2014 with Cheyenne the ever patient Labrador in tow. Commercial vehicles never convinced us with their shabby construction and weird lowest denominator equipment choices. By the time we stumbled on an affordable custom builder we were ready to make the leap but it took us almost six years to get there. 

We got what we wanted, our own eccentricities satisfied to a build quality we cannot complain about. I feel lucky and furthermore I feel very thankful we both enjoy this odd way of traveling and Rusty is getting used to the program too. It was a good week away from home and in three weeks we plan to do it again. 

The open road: