Remembering a time.

Remembering a time.

photo of blue sea
Photo by Ibrahim Asad on Pexels.com

music to read by: Minus the Bear – Pachuca Sunrise

This tune just carries me away in the airy feel it allays… plus when it came out I was in the Florida Keys (specifically Islamorada – I will move there in 4 seconds flat if I ever won the lottery, no offense to Key West, no, actually screw Key West, total tourist hole, which can be nice but not my speed at all).  Islamorada has it all, great lodging, amazing everything nature wise (preserves and rescue centers), fishing (some of the best in the world), hand feeding huge tarpon @ robbies (by the way have breakfast there), and the water… one of my most indelible memories was watching thunderstorms roll in off the Atlantic, in the tropics thunderstorms are very local, so I could watch the individual pods coming in with lightning lighting up the clear azure water lapping at my feet, it was like islands of thunder approaching the shore all around me, like city states floating in for battle or invasion, all of them missed my particular location, I wish I had a video to share but at the time I was only armed with my memory and flip phones were the norm, but imagine all these floating castles showering thunder and light down from their perch, in different columns approaching your position, but all around you, never towards you, as you sat in the moonlight with your feet in the clearest water you might ever see… yeah, that unreal, like a movie reel but real.

If you won the lottery…

If you won the lottery…

where would you go ?  But let me limit the thoughts…  it has to be someplace you have been…

white globe on a desk
Photo by Kaboompics .com on Pexels.com

So my point…there is a ton of places I would LOVE to go to like New Zealand (hence my poems as such) and clearly tons of European destinations … and then there is my own hemisphere … sheesh… too many to name ! So… that is why I limited this exercise to places I (or you) have been.

I would go to Islamorada in Florida… it is part of the Florida Keys, this trail of islands that kind of trails off the end of Florida, it is a magical place for me.  I have driven the length of them many times along the one highway (which is such an amazing drive). Islamorada is more me than Key West… because it is sort of like a normal town (as normal as you get in the tropics/the keys).  The tourism is not the total driving thrust of the collection of islands (which is what Islamorada is) but more or less something that happens as people come on through (mostly to Key West).  I remember so fondly that the island seemed to shut down at/near sundown and people flocked to see the sunset  (and a margarita) @ Papa Joe’s (not open last time I was there, apparently it was demolished)…  it was.. something out of a book, no wonder Hemingway loved this place, I would tend to agree with him… imagine a place where you work and then everything stops.  So you could meet at the local tiki bar, on the water, up on stilts, peering out into Florida bay, watching the sun slowly fade into the clear water, sipping a cool drink in a humid heat, with a cool breeze off the water washing you over, the hot sun, sort of surrendering to the day, still burning and fierce but sinking, revealing all the colors of sunlight you do not see during the day… draining all stress from your bones, the tide, seeing the waves just rolling past the mangroves, washing over you like that last daylight.

yeah, I would go to Islamorada and maybe never return.

check out this youtube channel, pretty much what I would do down there