The Skinny Island Post

This is Pekoe, our beloved, 13-year-old, diabetic cat. We got Pekoe and a sibling, Lewis, as kittens, and initially let them out to roam and play.  Lewis immediately ran onto A1A and was killed.  Consequently, Pekoe has never been allowed outside on his own.  We walk him several times a day on a leash, which he loves.  He is an exceptionally calm, polite animal, and extremely intelligent.

Last summer Pekoe went camping. Not on his own. Although Puss in Boots is my all-time favorite story, and I would have given him permission to traipse out on his own, his belongings tied in a bandana on a stick, that’s not how it went. We had long planned a trip to California to visit family, and expected to be gone about two months.  That was far too long to board Pekoe, who requires insulin injections twice a day.  So, we decided to take him with us.

Tired of trying to change clothes on our knees in our old, well-travelled dome tent, we upgraded and got a gigantic cabin tent with six-foot plus headroom and twenty feet long, which could be turned into three separate rooms with dividers. We planned to sleep at one end, Pekoe at the other, with equipment in the middle. We also got him a collapsable screened enclosure so he could safely be with us outside, and his very own backpack, demonstrated below with a manufacturer’s model, not for him to wear, but to carry him in for short hikes. All sound ideas, right?

Our first stop was the Big Biloxi River Campground.  We set up and spent an uneventful night except for some rain showers.  The tent held up great, no leaks, and there was plenty of room.  Portending.  Pekoe, as always adapted without a fuss.

In the morning we decided to try out his new backpack and hike down to the river for some fishing.  The camp website had said the river was great for bream, bass and catfish. Well, at the nearest river access from our campsite, the Big Biloxi was about twenty feet wide, and a dingy brown.  Maybe it was a tributary, I don’t know.  You had to climb down a steep, slick, ten-foot bank to stand in ankle deep mud by the river.  Pekoe rode along in his special pack, but was less than thrilled.  We stayed about ten minutes  It was one of only two times he rode in his pack.

We had a nice layover in a motel in Austin, then beat it down to Big Bend National Park.  This was our third time there, our first being in 1970 when we were in the army in San Antonio. It was Pekoe’s first visit.  This is our campsite, with a wonderful view. Weather reports said a heavy rain was headed our way from Mexico, with potential for flash flooding in the arroyos.  There is one road in and out to Big Bend from the north, a hundred twenty-five miles to the nearest town, and another two-laner out to the west, both crossing many arroyos, marked with signs warning of flash flooding.  Cars get carried away, never to be seen again.  We were a little anxious, but the rain wasn’t expected for two more days.

The first night was wonderfully dark and clear. Big Bend is one of the darkest places on the continent, great for star-gazing, which we were looking forward to.  And then the wind started sweeping down the valley, a wind like we have never experienced outside a tropical storm.  The new tent was roomy, for sure, but it also had an enormous amount of flat, exposed surface area, and I spent the better part of two hours fighting to keep it up from the inside.  Pekoe was cool, even when the tent finally blew down.  Accepting our temporary fate, we put him in his mesh enclosure, and we took the sleeping bags out under the picnic table pavilion, and slept that night on concrete.  Here’s what the tent looked like in the morning.

We set up again the next morning, and I reinforced the stakes and tie-downs. The rain was still predicted to be a day away, but by that evening, after a day of roaming the park by car, we noticed ominous dark clouds moving up the valley from the south. Remembering my army field training, I dug a drainage perimeter around the tent, but lacking a proper entrenching tool, I could only scratch out a very shallow trench in the tough desert soil with a hatchet.  Sure enough, the rain hit that night, a day earlier than predicted, and though it has been many months since the event, I still don’t have words to describe how hard that rain was. Even granting that rain on a tent sounds much worse than that on the roof of a house, I’ve ridden out several hurricanes, and though the wind wasn’t the same, the rain was worse.  Data we gathered the next day indicated over four inches of rain fell in the park that night, and we’re pretty sure most of it was on our tent.  It stayed upright and didn’t leak, but for a tiny opening at one seam near the ground, which I later patched with super glue, but water filled in from outside below the floor, which thankfully also remained intact, so that we were floating on a rather large water bed, while pummeled by the intense, unrelenting downpour.  Everything in the tent floated; the sleeping bags, packs, ice chest, Pekoe.  At one point he climbed up on one of our bags and said, “Is this camping, Papa?”  I assured him it indeed was.

There would be a tapering in the deluge, in which, exhausted, we would doze off, but then it would intensify yet again, and again, waking us many times.  It lasted all night; literally, all night. At dawn we crawled out, and with more rain yet forecast, decided to make for Guadalupe National Park on the western exit, taking our chances with the arroyos. It was still raining, though lightly enough now to allow us to take down the soaked tent and pile it, with all the other equipment, in our giant bag on the car rack.  There was a breakfast buffet up at the lodge, so we went there, leaving Pekoe in the car, and what a wonderful breakfast it was.

At this point, having written probably more than you can take, I am reminded again of the Uncle Wiggly the Gentleman Rabbit books I used to have read to me as a small child. Each chapter of those ended with a variation of the following: And in the next story, if I catch a fish in a milk bottle, and he doesn’t bite my finger, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggly in a parade.  So, in the next installment of The Skinny Island Post, if the rain lets up, and the frogs don’t form a union, I’ll tell you about losing Pekoe at Great Sand Dunes National Park.

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If you like the Skinny Island Post, you’ll really like “Bringing Back Canasta. It’s good literature. Ask your bookseller, or order direct from Amazon.  Visit amazon.com/author/sharrison3, for this and other books, and please consider writing a review.

When the tide is in we have to take our morning walk on the sidewalk along A1A rather than the beach. It is one of several facets of our life dictated by the tides here in The Little Hacienda, but perhaps the most significant. The morning walk is a post-newspaper, pre-breakfast ritual that sets the tone for the day. A lot rides on it.  And the tidal influence on the walk, whether in or out, is not just a one-day event in a repeating 12-day cycle. (More on why it’s a 12-day cycle later.) Given that, for most veteran morning walkers, (more on them later, too), the window to get out there is relatively narrow for one reason or another, the tides, either high or low, can influence the walking pattern for an entire week.  Factor in the time of year, (light in summer; dark in winter), heat, cold, wind; and you have yourself a far more complex set of circumstances than just walking out the door.

There is a solid, if diminishing corp of regular morning walkers, several of whom are former runners, like ourselves, whom we used to encounter on beach and sidewalk when we were younger, before knees and hips and general fatigue, (geeze, do I really have to keep doing this?) took their toll. They are friends we greet with a smile and wave, and sometimes, though not always, a brief conversation.  Friends who have a specific place in this marvelous tableau; friends you don’t have over, or visit. For the most part we know little about them, what they did, how many kids they have, marriages, their politics, etc., all the sordid details.  It is a friendship of commonality, the walk. Some whose names we know; most we don’t. There is a symmetry and balance best left undisturbed, I think.  There are some characters among them, whom I could describe, but I won’t, because you never know who might go out and pick up a copy of The Skinny Island Post tossed in their driveway by a wayward busboy trying to make ends meet with a second job, and find themselves unflatteringly depicted.  Over time it has become a rather beautiful representation and recognition of interconnectedness: I don’t need to know your history, it is enough to share the morning, because that is why you’re out here, and I know that. Have a good day.

The tides will have none of that. Unthinking and unfeeling, they are the clock.  When there is a low tide an hour or two before dawn, or up until two hours after, the beach is walkable for virtually a week in the morning.  And then it moves, and so do we.  If there is a low tide at say, 5 a.m., the next morning it will be about 50 minutes later, and so it goes, 50 minutes later each day.  It takes about 12 days to run through the cycle, to another optimal low.  When a high tide takes over for a week or more, we take to the sidewalk, because the sand is just too soft where we live to trudge through.  Lower tides provide firmer sand. Now, there is also a seasonal difference.  In the winter months, there is less tidal movement, meaning, there is significantly less difference between a low and a high. Very few walkable beach days consequentially.  The regulars we meet on the sidewalk say, “Cant wait until we get our beach back!”  I don’t know how many folks get into it in the depth I do, but the result is the same.

The beach, when it is wide, is a bare-footers paradise, affording a broad meander, should you choose, from wading in shallows to a faster-paced packed sand, counting of steps, forward progress, but all in the presence of shorebirds, crabs, and the occasional rolling dolphin. This morning, probably the last on the beach for several days due to rising tides, we were rewarded with the discovery of a Loggerhead turtle making her way back into the water after laying her eggs.

Unlike the beaches just south of us, our sand is not the fine-grained variety that compacts nicely.  Ours is large-grained and reddish, I guess caused by underlying shell material, and it can be exceedingly soft. What we lose in that department is more than made up for in its inability to support traffic.  We don’t have cars on the beach here like they do just 5 miles south.

When it’s too soft, we take to the sidewalk, which is itself a relatively new thing in comparison to how long the beach has been there.  The sidewalk was built not long after we moved in, some twenty-three years ago.  I don’t know what walkers did before that.

The sidewalk is very convenient, and parallels the beach for several miles in either direction. There are no buildings on the east side of A1A from Flagler Beach to a mile and a half south of us, so it’s a clear vista. But it’s still a sidewalk, and most folks have to wear shoes if they’re walking anything more than a few yards, which is the first limitation.  You just can’t dig your toes into a sidewalk, and the soles tend to wear out pretty quickly. As a native, I have evolved Florida feet, a modification, in my case brought about by going shoeless in the hot streets and sidewalks of Tampa as a kid, that allows walking barefoot on just about any surface for an indefinite length of time.  But I generally lace up, too, in case of the odd rock or bit of sharp litter.

Walking on the sidewalk when the tide is too high for the beach turns out to be just exercise, with the added inconvenience of having to actually watch where you’re going.  You can get lost in thought, or not-thinking, on the beach, you can meander.  You meander on the sidewalk and you end up in traffic. Ah, traffic.  The noise, the distraction, the interruption. And then there’s the people.  On the beach you can give people as wide a berth as you want, still acknowledging with a smile and wave, but you get to control the intimacy.  On the sidewalk, it’s personal, the distance between dictated by the width of the sidewalk.  Literally too close for comfort, even with the regulars. Over time, say 10-15 years, you are expected to say a little more than Good Morning, you are expected to reach out, to know more.

Or not, come to think of it.  Maybe the mechanism that’s responsible for getting someone out of bed at the crack of dawn, hot or cold, rain or shine, to walk 3 miles, year after year, is also responsible for a kind of comfortable solitude, a gradual, enveloping peace, that neither seeks nor requires validation. An alternate route.  I think there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

In dwelling, live close to the ground –Tao Teh Ching, Chapter 8

A little disclosure, embedded in reflection, something inevitable at this stage of things. Bear with me.

In 1975 we bought our first house, 1315 Jackson St., Tallahassee, Florida. I was just out of the army, and enrolled in the relatively new creative writing program at Florida State University, where I was completing the English degree I had left suspended in 1969. I knew I wanted to write, and was receiving some encouragement, spurred on by some early publications of poems, the first in the now long defunct Berkeley Samizdat Review, a  leftist periodical in Berkeley, of course, and the second, in Harper’s Magazine. Some credibility.  But I really wanted to do long fiction. I was encouraged first by my poetry professor, Van Brock, a gentle, extraordinary mentor and advocate, and then by the novelist Janet Burroway, who taught me something about honesty in prose, and who, very shortly, became a friend, and our very first baby-sitter.

We were living next door, in the bottom apartment of a small, two-story building at 1323 1/2 Jackson, when the house became available. It was owned by a recently divorced woman, whose father had built the place, and we got it for a song. It was a small, solid house constructed of brick, on two lots, with a detached garage, of the same brick. Two bedrooms, with bath between. We ripped up the old, soiled carpet and found wonderful pine flooring beneath. There was an old Sunbeam Alpine in the back yard, its engine missing. We sanded and finished the floors, removed the cover from the old fireplace and made it functional to augment the totally inadequate heat provided by an oil furnace outside the bathroom between the bedrooms. We Somehow got the Sunbeam towed, cleared the overgrowth on the large lot and put in a twenty by twenty foot garden. We got laying hens and built them a roost. There was a wild pear tree out back and two mature pecan trees.  We had canned pears, vegetables from the garden, fresh eggs, and bushels of pecans. We cleaned out the garage, and it became a make-shift studio for writing and weekly music jams, with a rotating, rag-tag group of musicians. Dancers, actors, and other artist types found their way to our little house. Our son was born in 1976 and spent his first few years with live music and livelier chickens. Friends helped with everything. One brought firewood during a particularly cold winter; others helped with a new roof on the garage and with removing an old water heater and installing a new one. No money exchanged hands. We lived small, and very happily. Our needs were few; we didn’t buy what we couldn’t afford; and made do, developing a mind-set and life-style that has served us all these years. We washed dishes by hand and hung our wash on the line. One of the most beautiful images I retain is of rows of diapers, cloth, of course, blowing in the sunny breeze on the clothesline.

It was in this time that I made a decision that has had pretty significant ramifications. A graduate writing program, followed by an academic career, which would undoubtedly afford time for writing, was possible and, by most standards, the advisable way to go. I remember very clearly deciding not to go that route. I decided to go independently, without the very supportive structure of academia, and write as I could, supporting myself as I could, accepting the outcome. I would either make it, or I wouldn’t. Well, because I have not made a living as a writer, you know how that turned out. But in a very important way, and accepting that, whatever choices I made, the quality of the prose just might not have been enough, the fullness of our life is in great part dependent on the decisions we made in that first little house on Jackson Street.

We had two other houses between that one and The Little Hacienda, where we have been now for twenty-three years. Fifteen years in a lovely 3/2 from which we worked, participated in Little League baseball and other suburban activities.  I wrote and published two novels from that house, but for me it wasn’t comfortable, which says more about me than where we were. I tried to put in a garden and chopped up all the underground tv cable. Things deteriorated from there.

When we found the old, dilapidated place on A1A across from the ocean that has become, through much hard work and love, The Little Hacienda, we found our slice of heaven that has allowed us to live simply and small, according to our predilection, and the consequent choices we made so long ago. Back then, on Jackson Street, we were just coming out of the 60s; the music, the fierce dedication to equality, optimism, fairness, hard work, simplicity, and love. We bought the ticket, climbed on board, and rode to here.

We still hang clothes to dry on the line; still do dishes by hand; and when I say we live small, it’s like living on a boat. Our kitchen is a galley; by all standards, the house is cramped.  But we have an ocean at the door, and a lush hammock out back; when we wake at night, it is to the sound of waves breaking, and crickets in the eaves. We are living small, close to the ground, and there is plenty of time for writing what must be written.

I think I understand St. Francis’ affinity for small animals and all creatures. At least the long-established myth and literature that depicts animals drawn to him.  Its not about a special grace or gift; that’s given to all; it’s simply about being still and paying attention. In silent observation, creatures abound. Unthreatened, they appear as they would, and do, in the presence of a tree, or bush, or flower.  When we are quiet they appear among us here every day; lizards, butterflies, snakes, and birds.  They are often curious, and frequently, even communicative in a way, a simple, unadorned way, a way devoid of meaning. That’s our imprint, meaning, and it diminishes what is authentically seen and felt. Being meaningless, it is therefore full of meaning.  Pretty Zen, I know, but pretty Franciscan, too.

After a slow start to the sea turtle nesting season, which starts May 1, and runs through October 31, there has been a recent increase in activity. We counted four new nests on our walk this morning.

Just missed witnessing one re-enter the water up close a few mornings ago.  I could see the shape a long way off as she slowly made her way back down the beach from where she had dug the nest and laid her eggs up  in the soft sand, and I was only twenty yards away when the difficult crawl was rewarded with buoyancy as she entered the water.  It is remarkable the difference between their excruciating effort on the sand, and their ease in water. I was out on the surfboard a few years ago when one poked its head up a few yards away, took a long look at this strange, fiberglass mounted apparition, then dove and stroked out of sight with incredible grace.  We have been lucky enough to witness two nestings from start to finish in the 23 years we’ve been here. Their determination to get their task done is one of the wonders of nature.

Closer to home, for quite a few years now we’ve had Florida box turtles around.  About a week ago I rescued one who had gotten himself wedged and firmly stuck in the garden fence.  These two were found rummaging in the compost pit beside the garden, where we frequently see them.

I found this spider on the same trip down into the hammock behind the house, resplendent in morning light. I don’t know what it is, but it’s quite beautiful.

When we first moved into The Little Hacienda many years ago, fresh from the well-kept lawns and shrubs of suburbia, where we were able to grow and maintain neither, we were yet determined to exert our will and at least grow grass where it seemed feasible, and nurture a variety of decorative plants.  To that end, while we were busy renovating the interior of the house, we also had a well sunk, a pump installed, and I set about laying a system of PVC to carry water to every corner of the property.  We planted stuff and watered every other day . . . for a while. Until the salt air off the ocean killed everything.  For several years after that, while conceding to the conditions we were given, we tried to keep the natural vegetation at least trimmed and shaped.  Finally, within the last few years, we’ve pretty much given up, and are just content to keep things out of the house as best we can.  The result has been wonderful, natural, flowery haven for bees, birds and butterflies. It’s hip now, returning to native landscaping, so I guess we’re hip.  Anyway, it’s wonderful to see all the little creatures make use of it.  These are my favorites.  It’s called a Rain Lilly, quite wild, and they spring up everywhere after a rain. Bees love them.

Well, after an extended hiatus, many meanderings, and a few blind alleys, The Skinny Island Post is back, refurbished, refinanced, and under the same old management. Sign up by submitting your email, and you’ll receive the first edition, whenever it appears.  In the meantime, feel free to peruse the older editions.  Also available on the dreaded FaceBook.  Good writing, great photos, occasional art work, and travel stuff.  Stay with us.