XC Run Days 16 & 17

The old backyard.

"I am haunted by waters." 

When I first read Norman Maclean's words, I did not need to ponder nor reflect. For me, as for any who grew up on the great waters of this land and had even half a soul, they were a simple statement of fact. As in: "Hard a'lee" is not, to me, a romantic term of the windships. It means: "Watch yer head, dummy -- boom's comin'". Far more prose than poetry, yet within lays the deepest poetry of all.

Leaving DeLand, I lit it up East. East, past the Spanish Moss and scrub, past Bubba's hallowed ground ("Daytooohnah, man!"), East to US 1 and that strong smell that could only be the Indian River.

Interesting river, the Indian. Incredibly broad and shallow, it's not really a river at all. It is a huge, long, narrow lagoon of the Atlantic bordered by a succession of barrier islands broken here and there by inlets. With the ocean to the east and the rivers of America's eastern watershed to the west, draining off the few inches of sand that is Florida, it is a place of battle, too. Salt against fresh and from that struggle comes --- that smell.

Never could decide if I love it or hate it (though, when the Hydrogen Sulfide levels are up, depending on the red algae, that question does tend to become moot).

Time to turn south on US 1. On to the highway were I learned to drive and ride a 'scoot. On to memory lane.

Fortunately, one of the first memories to come flooding back was that if you see Mary Jo comin' out of a parking lot or side road and you're in the right lane, better get over -- 'cause she ain't stoppin'. But, then, I ride California's Hwy 99 -- compared to that death trap this is the minors.

Rollin' down the old highway through Coco and Titusville and Melbourne, I found myself glad that my Dad, and so many of the others who turned their lives over to the dream of giving their children the stars, wasn't here to see. They're gutting NASA, closing it down, to pay for the flavor of the day programs the current crop hope will insure their continued power.

Aerospace Engineers are working at Starbucks. The lucky ones, anyway.

Past the Cape, it was time to turn left again. Over the Indian and on to A1A (Sorry Jimmy, that ain't your road, never was. It's MINE, Bubba, and I'm as big a Parrot Head as anyone). Took it as long as I could.

Oh, it was good to see the old bathtub again, to feel the on-shore breeze, to taste the tang of salt. But this was the place where Wolfe's admonition truly took hold, with the condos and hotels and the monstrosity that is Ron-Jon's.

I took the next bridge west.

Back on 1 I stopped at Palm Bay in an old motel. Treated myself to a good meal at "The Shack", where Dad and I had eaten so many years before. Fresh Pompano, simply grilled, and Conch fritters on a screened-in terrace overlooking the Indian is awful hard to beat.

Back to the motel, I wrote until three, peeking now and again out the window as drug dealers and prostitutes circled the 'scoot. The locals moved 'em on, and I went to sleep with the tart wind of the Indian my lullaby. 

Getting up on Saturday morning, I finished up the blog, loaded up the 'scoot and began the short trek into what I've always called "Tropical Florida". For me, this country really starts somewhere around Melbourne. Indescribably beautiful and horridly ugly.. The land of the Savannas, that scrubby sandy plain that grows into the Everglades. The land of sand dunes and sea grass. The land ruled by that Queen Bitch of all oceans: the North Atlantic. John McPhee, another favorite writer, once said that it was not by mistake that the lowest mark of the Plimsoll line on every ship was labeled "WNA". "Winter, North Atlantic".

We just call it hurricane season.

Today she was FAC. "Flat Ass Calm". But she didn't fool me, born and raised on her. Oh, I love her -- always and forever -- but I know she doesn't give one whit about me, except maybe for that brief moment, for which she always waits, when she can suck me down into her cold deep and feast upon my flesh and my bones and my soul. And while she's come close, more than once, she hasn't had me yet and now, an old man, my days of daring her past, I doubt she ever will, I still keep a weather eye on her. For she is quick and always aware and the lover that never lets go.

But I'm steamin' south. To the place I know and immediately get lost and find roads with familiar vistas and different names. To that movable feast of children and grandchildren, of nieces and nephews and dogs and noise and raucous love and life that is Debbie's house. I'm steamin' south to family. 

I'm steamin' south to Home.