In mid-summer with temps and humidity near 99 I'm drivin down to teh
coast to check on my sailboat before an approaching hurricane. My old
truck has no AC or even fan and its so hellashisly hot I carry a towel
that is soaked and a gallon of ice water. I decide to stop at the
spring fed slough that flows into the Wakulla R to cool my feet and
when I get out the smell of days old roadkill envelopes me. Thats
normal, all the highways smell like that in summer cuz the critters are
out running around feeding. I wander down to the water, crystal clear
rimmed with the eel grass that I have noticed grows best near springs
and an egret eyes me warily but continues looking for snails. Stepping
in the water almost burns its so cold compared to the air and takes my
breathe away even though its only to my knees. Mosquitoes everywhere
after the rain, repellant hardly stops em. Fortunately the repellant
does stop the yellow flies that plagued my childhood when no real
repellant existed. Huge Banana Spiders, the kind that my daughter has
a phobia about, nearly 4 inches across with big yellow stripes make
enormous webs across the open space of the water. My mom taught us to
like them cuz they eat bugs and she encouraged them to live in our
yard. I once tried canoeing this slough but its so clogged with fallen
trees and its course so uncertain that I got nowhere. A big old water
moccassin suns on one of the logs, normally aggressive, this ones
fairly sedate with his scales being a dullish brown from dried mud.
I stand thinking "I've lived all over the US and been a lot of
places from east to west coast and from South America to North Alaska,
many of those places so beautiful they took my breathe away. So, why
do I consider this area to be special? Where is the beauty that I
think it has?" I cant put my finger on it, after all the bugs will
make you crazy if the heat doesnt, the snakes are dangerous, the
terrain is flat, the air has so much pollen that its nearly deadly to
half the people I know (I am immune to it) even to my wife (who is from
Chicago). Maybe its the rampant life all over giving me the feeling
that if I stand still for more than a few minutes the vines will drag
me off. Maybe its just home, I dunno but I feel a weird connection to
it.
I wonder, do people from elsewhere feel this way about their home
places? They must but since their homes are different they must feel
connected to those different things. My wife misses snow and talks
nostalgicly about it but doesnt want to live in it. I want to live in
this awful place with its heat, cultural isolation, bugs and flat
terrain. Millions of people live near Chicago which I consider to be
hell and they seem to actually like it. I once knew a guy who lived in
Santa Barbara, CA and pined for Chicago. Is it simple familiarity that
we love about "home"?
I think my rant of this morning was driven by seeing an area being
cleared for housing, my home looking less and less like home every day.
Being 49 yrs old, the shock of having the foundation of my "home"
crumble bit by bit musta disoriented me. So, I apologize for being too
wordy and for my rant.